


Reconstruct

by avocadomoon



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Effie was a Rebel, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Moving On, Mutal Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26314681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: "I always tried to be gentle with you," he says. His face is still creased with pain, with things that Effie is remembering too - fights and tense silences, misunderstandings and that morning on that boat, all those years ago. Sunburned and sore and heartbroken, the both of them. "I wasn't always. And I'm sorry for that, Eff."
Relationships: Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket, Katniss Everdeen & Effie Trinket, Peeta Mellark & Effie Trinket
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91
Collections: Het Swap Exchange 2020





	Reconstruct

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melacka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melacka/gifts).



Peeta has been asking for months, and really there's only so many times that Effie can say no before she starts to feel like she's _saying something_ to him, so eventually she resigns herself to visiting Twelve. She doesn't want to be an imposition, she insists. She tells Peeta over the phone, on three separate occasions, that she's perfectly fine at the hostel near the train station, there's no need to go to any trouble and she'll be very cross with him if he inconveniences himself at all, and all he does is laugh at her. 

"Effie," he says warmly, his voice coming through loud and clear for the first time in weeks, the line free of static ever since the power grid repairs were finished in Four, "you're what, three feet tall? How could you ever impose on anyone?"

"I am a perfectly average height for a woman of my stature thank you," Effie replies, and he laughs again. "Besides, you know very well what I mean."

"I'm more worried about stepping on you than I am about being inconvenienced," Peeta teases, and Effie huffs and puffs just to make him laugh some more, and so when Effie goes to buy her train ticket a few hours later, she's still smiling. 

She goes back and forth half a dozen times on what to bring and what to wear, but in the end she doesn't have much anyway so it's all just bluster, really. None of the clothes she'd worn as an Escort had been hers; all of her outfits were designed by the stylists, planned out to the very last detail. Her furniture, her apartment, the clothes she wore at home - all of them were "gifts." Gifts with strings, that is. She hadn't even earned a salary all those years, which was another way of making them feel beholden to the Games, to dissuade them from having all those dangerous opinions. So needless to say, she doesn't own very much now. 

Most of her clothes come from Annie, who'd taken up sewing as a way to calm her nerves after the war. She makes beautiful dresses and scarves and blouses out of the thin cotton that's popular in Four, none of which will hold up well during the dead of winter in Twelve. So Effie decides to dress practically - a few sweaters, hand me downs from Johanna and Annie, trousers, a sturdy pair of boots that Effie wears when they go to the beach with Finn. She packs carefully, in a small suitcase, thinking, _maybe he won't be there._ Hoping for it, with a desperation that feels all too familiar. 

Peeta is there to greet her at the station, of course, holding out a steady hand in greeting as she stumbles down the steps, blinking disorientedly at the bright sunlight after hours in the dark passenger car. The entire layout of the town is different; Effie barely recognizes any of it as they walk through the newly-paved streets to the Victor's Village. Peeta points out what's different as they stroll; there, the new barber's opened up shop finally. Here's the library, old man Thomson's taken it over. And look, that's a gathering hall! We haven't used it yet, but they're talking about maybe holding concerts, wouldn't that be something? 

"They've done so much work in so little time," Effie marvels, touching the little yard markers posted along the path as they walk. Each one has the name of someone who'd perished in the bombings; Peeta had told her that touching them as one walks by is a sign of respect. The wooden tops are already starting to wear smooth from dozens and dozens of hands, but the steel frames are shaped into the letters of each name - unerasable. "It's really very impressive."

"The money from the reparation board has helped a lot with that," Peeta says. "Not to mention all that cash _you_ smuggled our way."

"That was from Plutarch," Effie says mildly. "And I believe it was gifted, not _smuggled._ "

"Sure," Peeta says, amused. "You know, it's the funniest thing - when I brought it up with him on the last conference call with the Capitol, he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. And Mayor Hudson changed the subject really fast, like it was a secret or something."

"That _is_ funny," Effie says, avoiding eye contact. "Oh, Peeta - is that your bakery?" She points quickly, touching his arm to avert his attention.

"Nice try," Peeta says. "That's the bank, Eff."

"Oh. Well, it looks like a bakery," Effie says. 

"Uh huh," Peeta says. 

It is lovely to see it all coming together, although Effie has been sent plenty of pictures by now, both from Peeta (he'd been gifted a camera from Katniss about a year ago, and has developed it into a full-blown hobby) and from Mayor Hudson, who is a charming young woman that Effie was very pleased to have secretly collaborated with. The money had come from the various estates of the dead Gamemakers, of which Effie had full access to due to her position with Paylor's government. Officially, she's an _aide,_ which is a vague enough title that she can adapt it to any situation - unofficially, what she mostly does is ride around the country handing out money and food to people, which is far more fulfilling than her last career to say the least. It is, very technically, illegal, since they're circumventing the reparation board and all the rigamarole of bureaucracy involved in that - although Effie doubts there'd be any court willing to convict them, at this current moment. Still, one must be discreet. 

The focal point of the village is still the Hob, which has been remodeled and repurposed into a sort of community center, with a few restaurants and a large, open area where people clearly come to gather and gossip, which is an essential part to any community, Effie knows. Further down past the main road is Peeta's bakery, too - a nondescript building with friendly blue shutters and a large window on the west side, where people can walk up and buy things without going inside. 

"For the hunters. So they don't track mud on my floor," Peeta says with a grin, tugging her through the back door. 

He has a full operation running now, three years in - _employees,_ and _regular hours._ The girl manning the counter can't be more than fourteen, but she greets Effie with a bright smile and offers her a free sample of a cupcake, which she politely turns down. The baker that day is a man Effie recognizes from Peeta's photos - Yael is his name, and he's from Three, originally. He offers Effie a slice of walnut bread, which she politely turns down as well. Then Peeta tugs her back into the cold storage, where he keeps the jams and preserves, and offers her a caramel-blackberry cookie, and Effie is only human, after all. She takes it.

"Oh, Peeta, this is delicious, it reminds me of - "

"The tarts we had - yes. I tried to imitate the recipe but without that cornflour from One I couldn't get it right, so I went off in my own direction. Do you remember the pie you and Annie made, that one time at - "

"Yes! With the marzipan filling?"

"I wish I could make marzipan out here, but the almonds we get are terrible," Peeta says, a bit dreamily. He grins at her. "You still haven't sent me the last piece of your gran's recipe for black pudding barm cake."

"I sent it in my last letter! You must have missed it."

"You did not," Peeta says, rolling his eyes good naturedly. "Family secrets are meant to be shared, you know. Who else is going to make it but me? You're a terrible baker."

"I very much am," Effie says mournfully. "Did Jo tell you I almost melted her kitchen counter? She must have - she was so furious with me. Wouldn't speak to me for weeks."

"We thought she was exaggerating, honestly," Peeta says with a laugh. He's rifling through the shelves, looking for something specific clearly, and his face lights up in the next second. "Ah, I knew I had it back here somewhere - here. This is for you." He hands Effie a large glass jar filled with some sort of jam colored a joyous, vibrant red. "Jalapeno strawberry. I remembered you talking about how your father used to make it."

"How on earth did you get your hands on jalapenos?" Effie asks, awed. She holds the jar up to the light, admiring the vibrant color. There hasn't been a decent jalapeno crop in Panem for years, since the winters started growing longer. The greenhouses in the Capitol were often reserved for more practical crops, as the natural harvesting seasons grew shorter and shorter.

"One of the settlers grows them," Peeta says. "A few miles outside the border. The soil is much better out there. He comes into town occasionally to trade for medicine and clothes, things like that."

Effie is, like most of the people who currently live in the inland Districts, desperately curious about the growing movement of people leaving the former borders of Panem to settle down in the wilderness outside of Twelve and Eleven, starting up farms and greenhouses in areas that were formerly restricted. It feels impolite to pry, however. "How lovely," she says with a beaming smile. Peeta grins back at her fondly, and she feels as if she's doing something right. 

As they walk down the street, Effie doesn't feel visible at all, which is a tremendous relief. She looks very different now, of course. They'd made her bleach her eyebrows for television, and the wigs and accoutrements were all so garish they provided their own form of disguise. Effie truly hadn't minded that part of it - towards the end of the war, it had begun to feel like a sort of armor. All those faces looking at her body, and still not a single one of them truly saw her. 

Well, except for a few people. Speaking of. 

"Haymitch fixed up one of the smaller houses for you," Peeta says. "No arguments. It's not even a full house - it doesn't have a kitchen, and it's fairly small. We think it was designed for servants originally - back when the Capitol gave Victors a full staff of cooks and housekeepers and what have you." He doesn't have to say that no Victor of District Twelve ever took advantage of such an offer. "We were using it for storage, but since it's about halfway between Haymitch's place and mine, we thought it was perfect. You can stay as long as you like. And come back whenever you like," he added hastily, "if you want. I know your work keeps you busy."

"I travel quite a bit," Effie admits. She quite likes that part of it - train journeys to every inch of the country, shaking hands with the young people who now make up the lion's share of the local governments. Effie is keenly aware that most of them probably stood in a crowd at one point or another, waiting for a name to be called. It feels like a sort of penance - to stand in front of them with her face bare, and let them make of her what they will. There are some that hold her past against her, of course, as is their right - but she doesn't feel hurt or offended by it much anymore. Effie encounters far more kindness and grace than she'd ever have expected, back when Paylor first presented this duty to her. It makes up for all the rest of it. "I stay with Annie and Jo when I'm not on the road. A month or two out of the year, maybe."

"Kind of out of the way, isn't it?" Peeta says in an attempt to be subtle, which is of course to say: not subtle at all. "Four isn't very centrally located. And I mean, neither is Twelve, but you know the train station has an awful lot of direct tickets nowadays."

"Does it?" Effie asks, blinking her eyes at him widely. 

"And we have actual seasons," Peeta says cajolingly, guiding her out of the way of a dirty snowbank. There are muddy, small boot prints all over it, and the pile is half-collapsed - the work of a few children on recess, no doubt. They edge delicately around the mess, keeping their boots on the driest part of the gravel, but it's near impossible to navigate completely cleanly. Both of them end up wiping their shoes on the grass, after they pass. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Effie laughs. "It is, though," she says, and he smiles at her, flattered. 

The house _is_ small, more of a guesthouse like Peeta had explained, but it's clean and well-kept, and obviously has not been used for storage at all. There's fresh paint on the walls and a pantry stocked with an array of dried foods that don't need any actual kitchen appliances to prepare - not to mention an icebox outside, buried in the ground as was tradition in Twelve, with some cheese and hen eggs and fresh meat, wrapped and salted with Katniss' trademark efficiency. The bed has soft purple sheets on it and it takes up the entire bedroom. The other room is a general area with chairs and the aforementioned pantry, but the real living is meant to take place on the deck, obviously a recent addition, which wraps itself all the way around the small building, a 360-degree porch that brings tears to Effie's eyes. Haymitch built this, she thinks, laying one hand against the yellow pine. She doesn't know how she knows, but she knows. 

"We know you like small spaces," Peeta explains, with a nervous sort of air, like he knows it's obvious this was far more deliberate and heartfelt than they wanted her to know. "Haymitch says you have nightmares about the Arenas...but the skylight is fine, I hope. There just wasn't enough light inside at night, and they still haven't fixed the power lines out here, so we don't have electricity. They probably won't ever fix it, to tell the truth."

"They want you to move into town?" Effie asks, turning slowly in the small room. There are candles for light, at night, but she can see what he means about the skylight. Sunlight floods the room and warms the air, even on a cold day like today - and the moonlight probably lights it up well enough as well, most nights. The sky out here is free from the light and smog pollution of the more urban Districts, crisp and clear. 

"Yeah. Haymitch is too stubborn though - and I mean, I don't know what they expected, he's been living in that old house for close to thirty years now," Peeta says. "And Katniss and I...we like our privacy."

"Of course," Effie murmurs. In the new era of Panem - or as it's called now, _The United Continental Territories -_ (terrible name, nobody seriously thinks it will stick) Twelve is becoming a new center of transportation and trade. It really has been very easy for Effie to fuel the government with money - everyone is betting on Twelve, nowadays. What had made them the poorest under the boots of the Old Capitol is now making them valuable - coal, wild game, craftsmanship. There's a furniture maker that's selling tables and bed frames for luxury prices - and Katniss makes quite good money on her salted and dried meat (sold under a fake name, naturally). Toolmakers are becoming quite lucrative as well - and since the train station in the town center was the first major one to be in operation after the war, the rest of the country's transit has sort of grown up around it. Effie can imagine how difficult it would be for Peeta and Katniss to live in the middle of all that - people from all over come through every day to trade at the Hob, or shop in town. 

Of course, their presence here has a lot to do with Twelve's renewed vitality - not that Effie thinks either of them fully realize how influential they are. The Mockingjay will always represent liberation and justice to the people of Panem - regardless of her trial, or "sentencing" to confinement in Twelve (which really is just a formality at this point - not that Katniss has taken advantage of it). 

"We get by fine though," Peeta continues. "Haymitch actually likes it, I think - gives him plenty to do. He chops all our wood, for the fireplaces in the winter. And I make our candles from beeswax. I trade with old Nate for it - he's our closest neighbor, lives just past the old fence. He's a beekeeper."

"How lovely," Effie says, picking up one of the candles in question. It's obviously homemade, a bit crooked and not very pretty, but it smells lovely, and there are sprigs of lavender embedded in the wax all around the base. "Does he harvest honey as well?"

"Yeah, but he trades most of that at the Hob. Much better prices from the out of towners." Peeta shoots her a grin. "I usually just steal some from the bakery. You wouldn't believe how many people pay us in ingredients. Honey, flour, almonds, sugar syrup..."

"Can you actually break even that way? Financially, I mean?" Effie asks. "Although, I suppose - "

"Out of towners," Peeta says again, with another wolfish smile. "My staff - especially Yael - charge three times as much. It all works out in the end. Not that I know about that," he continues, holding up his hands. "Dreadful business practice. If I saw it happening I would put a stop to it straightaway."

"Oh of course you would," Effie says, nodding solemnly, "because you're a man of great moral upstanding, Peeta."

Peeta puffs out his chest a little. "That's what everyone says, anyway," he replies, and they both laugh. 

It's a strange feeling to be here, a strange feeling to be so welcomed. Peeta leaves her soon to return to the bakery - he's meant to close the shop tonight, he tells her, and Katniss is due back from the forest around the same time, so they'll come together to fetch her for dinner - and Effie rattles around the small house for a little while, feeling it out. It's very pleasant inside the rooms - there's no heat of course, but the sun warms everything up - although the veritable mountain of blankets on the bed are a rather large clue as to what conditions she can expect come nightfall. 

Wrapping herself up in a second sweater - it still smells like Finn, Effie notices, with a soft pang of homesickness - she ventures out onto the porch. The door faces Haymitch's house, which is a rather uncomfortable thing - even looking at the familiar shutters on the windows and the well-worn wood of his front step makes Effie's heart quiver. There's a little bench shoved up against the wall, with a used ashtray sitting below it (who smokes? Effie wonders, it can't be Peeta, who always worries for everyone's health - and Haymitch has a sort of prim disapproval of tobacco that she's always suspected was because of how popular it was in the Capitol). Effie sits down and forces herself to relax, letting the cool wind numb her cheeks and whip her hair into a frenzy. You have to acknowledge your fears in order to face them, and then you have to face them to conquer them, or something. Effie remembers the general order of things. 

Well, in terms of facing: he's certainly fixed the place up. The roof is new, which is the biggest change Effie sees, and of course there's the elaborate-looking set up for the geese in the backyard. Effie can hear them even now, honking and squawking. The grass is actually cut, apart from some roughage near the deck that looks deliberately left to grow. Effie can see the tips of sweetgrass and mountain brome peeking up through the floorboards of the porch. And curtains on the front windows - _my God,_ Effie thinks, _he really has stopped drinking!_

The thought is at once a terrifying and jubilant one; something that Effie has been hoping and attempting to make a reality for almost ten years. She's still not sure what changed - the last she'd heard from him directly was almost a year ago, when he called her in the middle of the day, belligerently drunk and angry about something he couldn't manage to articulate properly. Being yelled at incoherently for close to an hour was not, needless to say, a pleasant note for their friendship to end on, but Effie had taken the hint well enough. 

Not that there was much of a friendship to speak of, at that point. Haymitch refused to visit her in Four, and Effie could only get away from work once or twice a month, at most, in the beginning. He seemed to take her explanations and her absences as personal affronts - and they've never been all that good at speaking on the phone, even when things between them had been friendlier. Effie had been planning a visit at the time of that final call - had even been entertaining thoughts of asking, as subtly as she could manage, about staying longer - but he'd ignored her calls for weeks after the rather horrid, one-sided fight - either hanging up as soon as he heard her voice, or refusing to pick up the phone altogether. 

Effie had been angry at first, and then she was just heartbroken, which made her feel stubborn and prideful, and angry all over again. Perhaps it was the childish way he'd gone about it - or because she still didn't know what he'd gotten so angry about. Or perhaps it was, quite simply, because Effie had always expected it to happen deep down, and had fooled herself into thinking it wouldn't. She was very good at pretending that Haymitch's attention meant more than it did - and it always broke her heart, every single time. 

She feels herself slipping, despite herself, into some proper melancholy as she sits there staring, but she couldn't quite help it. She's going to see him soon - if not at dinner tonight, then at some point, during her stay. She's not sure if she's quite ready. But then again - would she ever be? She'd never felt ready, during the Games. He'd walk (or stumble, or stagger, or what have you) into the room and she'd feel like a little girl, breathless and frozen where she stood, overwhelmed with the blunt force of her own feelings. She wanted him to look at her and also not to notice her at all; she wanted him in all sorts of silly ways that she'd known, even from the very beginning, that he would never give her. 

The trouble was always that he made her a better person, without even trying - her own want, her own hopeless love, made her stand up straighter, try harder, harden herself against the temptations of turning her face away and giving in to an easier, emptier life. When Cinna had approached them both, Effie had said 'yes' first - and it was because Haymitch was standing right there next to her, listening. She's too old now to tell herself any different - of course it was the right thing, but Effie had always known what the right and wrong things were, it was the motivation to do anything about it that had been lacking. No Capitol with half a brain could fool themselves for long - it was just that there were so many easy excuses to make for yourself, for your own complicity. And then the matter of what to do about it - there was no room for rebellion, or contrary thought, or morality. Nowhere was safe, and no one was good, Effie had always thought - so the best you could do was keep your head down. That had worked perfectly until she was plucked, straight out of her graduation ceremonials, for the Escort training, a path she did not choose (although she had, for various reasons, tried very hard to be good at it), and which did not allow her to go unnoticed. 

And then she met Haymitch - a man who was so plainly good, so fundamentally decent (despite all his efforts to convince everyone around him of the opposite) that Effie couldn't help but want to be good too. And she _is_ a good person - she knows that now. Her cooperation in the Games had a purpose, a design, and she'd bled for the Rebellion just as much as anyone. Her torture in the Capitol during the occupation had earned her the trust of Paylor, who then gave her the opportunity to do more good - which is all Effie's ever really wanted, at the end of the day. A reason to wake up each morning that would mean something, change something. And if _that_ was what Haymitch was so angry about - well, Effie just doesn't quite know what to do about that.

Perhaps she should take up smoking, she thinks, as she sits there and wallows - for what else is there for her to do? It's another few hours before she gets to see Katniss, and Haymitch clearly isn't home. She'd brought a book with her for the train but she'd finished it before she even left Four - and Effie can't stand the television anymore. Not that there is one to be found here in the Victor's Village, anyway. 

As if summoned by her pitiful thoughts, a rusty truck has appeared on the gravel road, that can only be Haymitch. She'd heard from Peeta that he had a car now - there were plenty of old ones sitting around after the war, free for the taking for anyone who could fix them up - and he must have found a source of petrol from somewhere. Effie sits frozen - literally and emotionally - as it huffs and puffs up to the little cluster of houses - and when it gets close enough, she can see his shock of dark hair through the windshield. Her breath feels cold inside of her lungs. 

Several minutes pass, between when the truck parks, and when Effie sees Haymitch climb out of it. She thinks of sneaking back inside, but if he's already seen her then that would be humiliating - and he would surely call her out on it. But she won't call out to him either, she decides - straightening her shoulders and pressing them flat against the siding of the house. She'll just sit right here and pretend to be very occupied with the sky - she's birdwatching or something, that's it - and if he wants to speak with her then he'll have to march his arrogant boots right over here and say hello himself, especially after how they'd left things, it's the very least he could do - 

A very loud horn honk interrupts her train of thought, and Effie shrieks in surprise, nearly falling right off the bench. The geese start braying in alarm, out around back, and Effie launches to her feet, her heart pounding in her chest. Haymitch is standing there looking right at her, one arm still inside the truck, his hand right on the horn. 

"What the - " another horn honk drowns out the second half of her exclamation, and she jumps again. "Haymitch! What?!" Effie storms over to the edge of the patio, throwing her arms out in the air at him. He's still standing there looking at her, too far away for her to decipher the look on his face. "Don't do that again!"

"I wasn't sure if you saw me," he yells, waving his free hand up in the air. The horn honks one last time, a quick burst of sound that sadly makes her startle one more time - she's nothing if not skittish these days - and she can see him laughing a little as he slams the door shut. She crosses her arms and attempts to glare. "Just wanted to make sure!"

"God, you are so unbelievably rude. I cannot believe I actually forgot," Effie yells, noticing with some alarm that he's walking towards her with purpose, a large scarf hanging from his neck and some sort of bag in his hand. "Were you just trying to scare me? I was just sitting here, minding my own business, and you had to just - "

"Freezing your tits off, most likely," Haymitch says, close enough now that he doesn't have to yell. Effie swallows thickly, telling herself sternly not to stare for too long. He looks older and younger all at once - new wrinkles around his eyes, a streak of grey in his hair - but his color is so much better, and there's life in his face again. Her heart quivers. "What the hell were you doing? It's cold as hell out here. You don't even have a coat."

"Well, I - " Effie takes a startled step back as he jumps the steps on her porch, his boots clomping loudly on the wood. Flustered, not knowing where to look, she wraps her arms around her arms and realizes that yes, her tits really are rather frozen. "I left it inside."

Haymitch comes to a stop by one of the pillars on the porch and eyes her critically. "Your lips are blue," he says sternly. 

"What? No they aren't."

"They are. A little," he says, and angles his head sharply at the door. "Get inside. Come on - I have food." He lifts the bag, and Effie notices for the first time that it's from Peeta's bakery. "Coffee too."

"I hadn't noticed," Effie says blankly, and blinks as he walks straight inside like he owns the place - which, Effie supposes, he technically does - gesturing her inside with one hand. She follows tentatively, her heart still in her throat, and then realizes when her cheeks start to ache with the sudden warmth that yes, she had been rather freezing out there. "I was just caught up in my thoughts, I suppose, and I didn't even realize how long I'd been sitting there. Oh - thank you," she says, reaching out for the thermos of coffee that Haymitch has pulled from the bag. "Is all this from Peeta?"

"He said you two got to talking and forgot to stop for lunch. Sit down," Haymitch says, still looking at her rather strangely, like he thinks she's about to faint right there at the table. "I'll build a fire. Put this on." He hands her his scarf, which Effie fumbles with for a second - it's heavier than it looks. Wool, she supposes - there's a rather large sheep farm on the other side of town that's been very successful, she's heard from Mayor Hudson. "And drink that slowly. Did you bring water with you?"

"Over on the counter there," Effie says, nodding. It's common practice - and courtesy - to bring your own, these days. Every District has had purification and distribution problems. Thank God Four is by the ocean - most days Annie and Effie just take Finn for a swim, instead of bothering to come up with enough water for a bath. "Only enough for a day or two though, Peeta said I could buy some at - hey!"

Haymitch, without ceremony, has poured a large gulp of her water into a small container from the bag. He shakes his head at her. "I have plenty of water at the house. It's fine."

"You could've asked," Effie says huffily, but he just ignores her, swirling the container - it looks sort of like a bowl, with a lid - around in one hand as he rummages around in the bag with the other. "What _is_ that?"

"Soup," Haymitch says. "It's meant to be served cold. They sell this little bowl of ingredients, and all you have to do is add water and mix it up. Peeta came up with it for Katniss, something she could take with her when she goes hunting." He shrugs, placing it on the table in front of her. "It's pretty good. I eat it a lot."

Effie takes the lid off curiously. The smell is strong - cinnamon and almond and what she thinks might be vinegar - and the soup itself is a deep, creamy color that reminds Effie of the frosting on the cookies on the front display at the bakery that day. "What's in it?" she asks, picking up the spoon he hands her and taking a spoonful before he can even reply. It tastes like spicy almonds - Effie stirs it up a bit more with the spoon, evening out the consistency, and discovers that there are bits of fruit in it, as well. Grapes, she realizes, fishing one out with the spoon and popping it into her mouth. 

"Bread, almonds, vinegar, and water obviously," Haymitch says, turning his attention to the fireplace. "And spices. Whichever ones Peeta uses - the recipe is secret. Some folks add fish, or chicken. I put honey in it and eat it in the mornings."

"It's delicious," Effie says, and discovers with her next bite that she's actually starving. "It would be good with a bit of chili oil on top, and some game. Oh, I brought firewood too - "

"Had some ready," Haymitch says, tugging the cover off the fireplace. Sure enough, there's a pile already built on the other side of the grate. All he has to do, it seems, is light it up. "Very polite of you though, as usual. Appreciate it."

"You don't have to be sarcastic," Effie says with a scowl, but he just laughs, the sound easy and familiar. The air between them feels strange - warmer than she remembers it being, before they'd stopped talking, friendly like it'd been in the twilight days of the war, when she was recovering from her injuries in Thirteen. Something's changed again, she realizes, and as usual, she doesn't know what it is. "He must make a lot of money off of these. I saw that little window he has, and the walk-up customers."

"Since Sae died, most people go to Peeta's for dinner in town," Haymitch says. Crouched as he is by the fireplace, coaxing a flame out of an old fireplace lighter that'd been sitting on the mantle, he looks half his actual size and twice as intimidating. For some reason, Effie was never all that moved by his anger or scorn, his swaggering arrogance that he deployed as an intimidation tactic at the Capitol, to scare off the fluttery teenagers that used to follow him around like pigeons. No, she always knew most of that was just bluster - it was his gentleness and his empathy that always unnerved her. Probably because she wanted him to use it on her, oh so very much. "He only serves the people he likes, though. All the out of towners get are the cupcakes and shit in the windows."

"Well, his cupcakes are very good also," Effie says. She's hit the bottom of the bowl - the soup had disappeared much too quickly for her to keep track. It really is very good. "Then I feel quite honored by this soup, I must say. Being an out of towner myself."

"You don't count," Haymitch says shortly, then busies himself with the fire. Effie finishes her soup and watches him fan it, poking the kindling around with his bare hands until it starts to grow. 

The room warms quickly, as the fire takes hold, and Effie feels that fragile strangeness again as he joins her at the table, his coat crackling with every movement. Effie's muscles feel looser, now that she's warm. She drinks her coffee slowly, and watches him take off his coat. His shoulders are so broad - she'd forgotten. He's so much bigger than she is. Taller, and wider - it's easy to forget the physicality of a person when they're not right there in front of you. 

Into the eerie silence, Haymitch says, "how was your trip?"

"Quite fine," Effie replies, ludicrously. Are they really going to sit here and talk as if nothing happened between them? Then Haymitch nods, his expression easy and pleasant, and well - it seems they are. "There was a delay at my connection in Eleven - the river flooded the station again. They rerouted me up north, to one of the border stations with Five. So that was a bit of a headache."

"They just need to reroute the damn track already," Haymitch says. "The delta's only going to get worse."

"Yes, I agree. But the Mayors of Eleven are quite divided on the issue," Effie says. "Plutarch's created an entire committee for it. Isn't that nice of him?"

Haymitch snorts. 

"Well. They'll figure it out once it starts impacting their imports, I'm sure."

"Heard they were struggling with all the migrants. Did they really block off the archipelago?"

"Yes," Effie says. "Former Capitol citizens were buying up all the property on the islands, driving up the living costs. Making a nuisance of themselves too, you can imagine. Four and Two passed similar edicts - you have to be a natural born citizen of the District in order to buy oceanside property, now. Caused quite a stir." 

"I can imagine," Haymitch says, a bit bitterly. "You'd think the Capitols would want to stay inland. Up in the mountains - it's what they're used to."

"The trends come and go," Effie says with a tired sigh. She can remember, very barely, the days when she was young, when mountaintop cabins and snowy hilltops were the height of luxury. That had changed, of course, with time. The Capitol was built high up, into the side of what her father had always called _the Front Range,_ in a tone of voice that had sounded archaic even to her very young ears. They'd built it there for safety reasons, of course, to protect the seat of government from the tsunamis. But Effie often wondered if they'd planned it out even then - positioning the city strategically, in a spot that could be defended and blocked off, turned into a fortress with the natural advantage of the landscape. "In twenty or thirty years, they'll be different again. Once the oceans move further in."

"And eventually, we'll all be underwater," Haymitch says, raising his coffee thermos to an invisible God, in respect or something else, Effie was never able to figure out. "Everyone's equal when they're dead. Chaff used to say that."

Effie feels a sudden sharp melancholy at the mention of Chaff. He used to flirt shamelessly with her every time he stopped by Twelve's penthouse. She'd always had a very fun time coming up with insulting ways to brush him off, because the meaner she was, the more he'd laughed. Chaff was a very easy man to amuse, and one of the hardest moments of the Quell for Effie was watching him die. 

"Indeed," she says, somewhat at a loss for words. 

Haymitch clears his throat after a beat of silence, nodding at his scarf, around her shoulders. "Warmer? You've got some color back."

"Yes, thank you."

"Good." He clears his throat again. "Really, what were you doing out there? You looked…" he shakes his head. "Out of it."

"Just thinking." Effie scowls, in the next moment. "I wasn't having...one of those things. Episodes. Like I used to have. I don't get those anymore."

"If you say so," Haymitch says. "It looked like one. I sat in my truck for almost five minutes, waiting for you to notice. You didn't move."

He was watching her? Effie blinks. It hadn't felt like _five_ minutes to her. More like one or two. "I was just _thinking,_ Haymitch. A girl's allowed to think."

He holds up his palms, a grin hiding in the corner of his mouth. "Sure, sure. Dangerous, though. A girl who can think. That's what my papa always told me, anyway."

"Oh really? Mine said the same thing, only about boys."

Haymitch chuckles. "Smart man."

Effie buries her face in her coffee, which has gone lukewarm, feeling rather pleased with herself for making him laugh. "Well then," she says, gulping down the last of it, before it can grow completely cold. It travels down her throat and her stomach pleasantly, a little line of liquid warmth, and when she sets the thermos back down, he's watching her. "Where were you? In that big, loud truck."

"In town," he says. Another beat, and he smirks. "It's even dirtier on the inside."

Effie rolls her eyes, willing herself not to react. "At least it runs."

"With a hell of a lot of work, yes, it does," Haymitch says, sighing in annoyance. "It's a group effort. Me and Katniss keep it alive, somehow. Sweat and spit and high hopes, mostly."

"What do you need it for? Those carts people are using look much more efficient."

"The bakery, mostly," Haymitch says. "Peeta gets ingredients from a bunch of the settlers, and they're spread out all over the place. The trips would take three times as long in one of the carts."

"How lovely of you to help him," Effie says neutrally. 

"Don't call me lovely," Haymitch grumbles, and she smiles at him, unmoved. He makes a face then, an old game they used to play in the background of the Capitol stages - arguing without words, imitating the announcers silently backstage, while they waited for their cues. Trying to make each other laugh. Effie's smile falters, remembering. He really is lovely, and he always has been, is the bottom line. "They pay me with food. It's a business transaction, really. You should see my kitchen."

 _I'd like to,_ Effie thinks. "And I suppose it's all very much against your will, grudgingly and resentfully done, with no emotional motive behind it at all."

"Uh," Haymitch says, making another face, "sure," and Effie laughs. "Listen - how long are you staying?"

"I - staying?" Effie asks, to stall. Her fingers have gone tight around the thermos. 

"Yeah, in Twelve," Haymitch says, a bit impatiently, like he thinks she's being dense on purpose. Which she is, so that's fair enough. "Peeta didn't mention."

"I didn't have an exact timetable," Effie admits. "I'm due for some meetings in Eight in a few weeks, but - "

"That's not far. There's a direct train every other morning."

Effie frowns. "I only brought enough clothes for a few days, however."

"We have clothes here. You know - we _make_ clothes here," Haymitch says, with an expression so aggressively neutral it raises Effie's hackles a bit, putting her in mind of some of their fights, when he would stand there as cold and unmoving as a stone while she just got angrier and angrier. "How long do you _want_ to stay?"

"Why do you care?" Effie snaps. "I won't take up too much of your precious time. I didn't even ask you to come over here, you know."

"No, you didn't," Haymitch agrees, his mask flinching, ever so slightly, in the face of her genuine irritation. "You didn't tell me you were coming, either."

"Was I supposed to send you a psychic message?" Effie drawls, her voice sounding as dry as her mouth feels. "A smoke signal? You stopped taking my calls, Haymitch."

He's silent for another odd beat. "I did," he says finally, his face splitting open a bit in the second before he covers it with one of his large, cracked hands. "I did. I couldn't - I couldn't talk to you anymore. I'm sorry."

Effie doesn't speak for a second, her chest aching so much she's rather surprised she's not bleeding. She breathes through the pain for a long second, trying to keep her face under control. Since he's not even looking at her, she's not sure it even matters, but it's the principle of the thing. "Well," she says finally, wincing at the sound of her own voice, the hurt in it so raw that she's embarrassed by her own vulnerability already. "You don't even have to be talking to me now. If it's such an imposition."

"That's not what I meant. Effie," Haymitch says, visibly struggling for a moment for words. Effie watches his hands warily, the way they clench into fists against the weathered table top, how he reaches out as if to touch her, but pulls away at the last second. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

Effie waits for him to say more, to apologize for the actual thing that hurts her: _I couldn't talk to you anymore._ But of course he doesn't. "What do you want, Haymitch?"

"Nothing. I just - we fixed this place up for you," he says. His voice is low and controlled, in the way it often sounded when he was in strategy meetings in Thirteen, deliberation and calculation in every word he said. It's how he sounds when he's being cautious, Effie knows, which also hurts quite a lot. To be honest. "You can stay as long as you like. And when you leave - we'll keep it clean and everything, so it's ready whenever you want to come back. It's no problem."

Effie doesn't have the first idea of how to respond to that, so she doesn't say anything. Haymitch stares at her for a moment, caught in some wordless frustration, before he heaves a great sigh. 

"I never know what to say to you," he says lowly, which makes Effie's stomach feel like it's falling straight down out of her body. "Look, the kids wanted you to come. I wanted you to come, too. I don't want to fight, either."

Effie struggles with her temper for a moment, the frustration at knowing there was some thread of understanding she was missing. "It's a very charming little house."

"I know you really mean that, which is kind of sad," Haymitch says, with a tentative grin. He's trying to tease her out of anger, she realizes, which is a familiar enough gesture. He'd often use it in lieu of an apology - but of course he did just apologize, several times, Effie realizes. Not for what she'd really wanted him to apologize for, but he _did_ say it, and she could tell he meant it. "Where do you live in Four? Jo and Annie's garage?"

"It's actually a room off their patio," Effie says, and he shakes his head at her again, smiling ruefully. "I don't really like - "

"High ceilings, big spaces," Haymitch says, finishing the sentence for her. His eyes are a warm blueish grey, glinting in the fire's glow. "I remember."

Effie swallows against her dry throat, with some effort. "Well, I should think you would," she says. 

Katniss is no more effusive than she'd been the last time Effie had seen her in person, but she does submit herself to Effie's hug with a smile. Her stomach brushes against Effie's as they hold each other delicately, and Effie can't stop herself from tearing up a little as she pulls away and looks at her head to toe for the first time - her hair long and lush again, color in her cheeks, a child in her womb. She looks like _herself_ , like the person she was meant to be. 

"Don't cry," Katniss says, noticing her teary eyes. She rolls her eyes, but she's still smiling. "You can touch my stomach if you want. Peeta does it all the time."

"Oh no, that's not - I'm just so happy that you're happy, that's all. You look beautiful - just so healthy and lovely," Effie says. "People take liberties all the time, don't they? It was the same for Annie."

" _All_ the time," Katniss says, long-suffering. Peeta, clomping up behind her in big snow boots, overhears this and laughs. 

"And you set them to rights every time, sweetheart," he says, and brushes past for his own hug, an affectionate embrace that makes Effie smile tearfully again. "Sorry I forgot to feed you, Eff! I got so caught up on the tour. Did Haymitch come by? I gave him some stuff and told him to check in on you."

Of course Peeta had told him to, Effie thinks. Her smile dims a little. "Yes, he was here. That soup was absolutely delicious, Peeta. Really, I scarfed it down."

"It's pretty popular. Katniss used to eat it by the gallon, but it bothers her stomach now," Peeta says. 

"Can't eat anything I used to like," Katniss says mournfully, one palm on her belly. She's only just now starting to show, obvious enough that people probably know that she's pregnant, but not so encumbered yet that she still can't go out hunting. "Crackers and crackers and - oh yeah, more crackers - "

"I do put stuff on the crackers," Peeta says. "Sometimes."

"I have to take these protein pills, for the baby," Katniss says, wrinkling her nose. "I can't keep anything solid down. It's horrible."

Effie frowns in sympathy, squeezing Katniss' elbow. "Annie had some luck, when she was pregnant, with this hot chocolate mix that's popular in Four. She said it settled her stomach. I can send you some if you like."

"It's worth a try," Katniss says. 

"Well, I'll eat crackers with you, if that's what we're having tonight," Effie says cheerfully. "If Peeta can work the same magic with crackers as he does with almonds and water - "

"The secret is my spices," Peeta says with a grin. "My dad's old secret mix. He used it in raisin bread, though."

"Actually, Haymitch killed a deer," Katniss says. "A couple days ago. So we're having steak." She pauses. "Well, _you_ guys are having steak."

"Haymitch hunts?" Effie asks, caught on the rather ludicrous idea of Haymitch Abernathy going anywhere in the wilderness. The man couldn't even walk through an empty field without complaining. "Like...in _nature_?"

Both Katniss and Peeta laugh at that. "He actually killed it in his backyard," Peeta explains. "Would you believe he sits out there at night and meditates?"

"Absolutely not," Effie says. 

"Well, he does. Or that's what he tells us he does. Maybe he just...falls asleep out there, I dunno. But he was outside a few nights ago and a buck wandered by and he shot it. So we're having steak," Peeta finishes cheerfully. 

"Of course he keeps a gun on him," Effie says, with a roll of her eyes. 

"It's for the squirrels," Katniss explains with a grin. "Muttated, crossed with some kind of beaver. A couple escaped in the woods here a few years ago and started breeding, and now they're everywhere. They're gigantic, and vicious." She bares her teeth at Effie playfully, crooking the fingers of one hand into a claw. "If you're planning on wandering around in the yard at night, you should take one too."

"Noted," Effie says faintly, unsure if she's being teased or not. When no one laughs, she figures they're being serious. "Do you hunt them?"

"Yeah, they're easy enough to kill. They taste like shit, though." Katniss grins. "I sell most of 'em to the other Districts. They don't seem to notice a difference."

"Entrepreneurs, the both of you," Effie says proudly. "Who would've thought?"

"Other than you? Nobody," Peeta jokes. 

The dinner is at Haymitch's, Effie learns with some trepidation, although the conversation with Katniss and Peeta is friendly enough that she feels somewhat at ease as they climb the stairs to his house. She'd been right about the mountain grasses - they snake up through the floorboards of the porch, giving it an effect like the house is about to be overtaken by wilderness. An odd choice for Haymitch, who really is quite fussy when it comes down to it - but it is quite beautiful, Effie thinks. 

"The whole house is redone," Peeta says. "Since he stopped drinking he does a lot of projects. I think it helps, with the cravings and everything. He did most of the work for our nursery."

"We built the cradle though," Katniss says gently, in a softer tone, like it's only meant for Peeta's ears. He smiles at her warmly. 

"Yeah," he says. "I designed it myself."

"I can't wait to see it," Effie tells them earnestly. 

The door opens in the next moment, before they approach, and Haymitch stands there with a coffee cup in one hand, his palm flat against the door. Effie blinks at his sudden appearance, and then rips her eyes away quickly, before he can notice that she's looking. 

"Before you say anything," Haymitch says, and his voice sounds hoarse, like it used to when he would drink. Somewhat alarmed, Effie looks back at him, but his expression is smooth and unbothered, and he certainly doesn't _look_ drunk. "I didn't touch the food. I only made coffee. Hey, Eff."

"Hello," Effie says quietly, wrong-footed again for some reason, by his easy greeting. 

"Alright, but I actually did _want_ you to keep an eye on it," Peeta says, brushing past Haymitch into the house, with casual familiarity. "You were supposed to make sure the roots don't burn."

"They're not burnt," Haymitch calls after him, stepping back so Katniss and Effie can get past. "Guy doesn't trust me with anything. Alright, kiddo?"

"Alright," Katniss replies, bumping his shoulder with her fist as she strides past, with similar confidence to Peeta's. Haymitch's eyes then turn on Effie, who still stands uncertainly a few steps beyond the door, feeling the bite of the cold outside even moreso now that the warmth of his house is right there in front of her. 

"Hey," he says again, gesturing at her strangely with his coffee cup. Something between a wave and a beckon. Effie frowns at his hand, confused. "You good, honey?"

"Yes," Effie says blankly, and then remembers herself. "Don't call me that."

Haymitch's face turns playful, almost slyly so. "You don't like it?"

"I've been telling you for fifteen years I don't."

"Huh." Haymitch takes a long drink of coffee, turning away from her, but leaving the door open. "Don't remember you ever saying anything like that."

Effie sets her jaw, and follows him inside. 

The last time Effie was inside of Haymitch's house was the year of the 70th Hunger Games, on a particularly tense Reaping Day. Haymitch had not shown up on time for the ceremonies, which was a preplanned tactic to ensure that Effie could stall Twelve's Reaping long enough for a group of refugees to sneak out past the borders before the television cameras went live. Using the commotion as a cover - but slipping out just in time before the tapes started to roll. Haymitch had already wiped most of the security footage on the local level with a device smuggled to him via Cinna's cousin in Five - but it was up to Effie to bluster loudly enough that the harried director would use his rarely-used "technical difficulties" excuse to push the entire schedule back. It was a risk, certainly - very visible, to delay the Reaping itself - but since Twelve was always the last to be broadcasted, they had some measure of flexibility. 

Mayor Undersee - a Rebel sympathizer who had been deemed untrustworthy because of his liabilities (namely, his family) helped by making a nuisance of himself as well, and so it was decided in the hullabaloo that Effie would venture to Haymitch's house to fetch him, as the consensus was that he was probably too drunk to come by himself. None of the Peacekeepers wanted to bother with Haymitch at that point - most of the soldiers assigned to Twelve on a permanent basis were either in on the plan or sympathetic enough to ignore it, and the rotation for the extra guards for the Reaping Days was somewhat of a punishment for the Capitol Peacekeepers, so they never got the most ardent or dedicated recruits. Plus, Haymitch had fashioned himself a reputation for puking on any soldier that dared venture past his doorstep, so needless to say, Effie was allowed to go off alone. (A disgusting, but very effective, tactic.)

The house had been decrepit, near falling apart, back then. Effie remembers very vividly sitting in the kitchen with Haymitch - who had not really been very drunk at all, but he'd gotten very good at pretending to be so - waiting in tense silence for the go signal from their Peacekeeper contact outside. A series of songbird calls, passed from person to person, would signify that the family was clear, and Effie and Haymitch would then return and carry on with the grim business of the Reaping. To this day, Effie doesn't know what had happened to that particular refugee family - the father was a prison escapee, and the teenage daughter had been heavily pregnant, hence the urgency (infants were much harder to smuggle out past the sound-sensitive cameras) - but they had gotten word that they'd made it to the Covey encampment a few miles outside of Panem's borders, which was much further than a lot of escapees made it. Effie likes to think they're still alive out there somewhere, in the Wilds. 

Maybe they don't yet know that Snow is dead, and Panem has fallen. Or maybe Effie had walked right past them in Thirteen - most of the people there had been refugees of one sort or another. Covey people, or tsunami survivors from abroad, or wanderers who had ended up there somehow, driven out of their settlements by the droughts or dangerous tides. There was a reason nobody thought there was any life outside the borders - a lie, but a believable one. Life was very hard, in those areas. 

The house is now, Effie marvels, almost unrecognizable. None of the furniture is the same, and the walls have been stripped of the old, peeling wallpaper and replaced with a plain coat of grey paint that feels very soothing. Everything is clean, the lights all work, and Haymitch's crap is scattered all over the place - clothes on every surface, books lying spine-down on the sides of chairs, empty water bottles on every table. At least _that_ hasn't changed, Effie thinks with some relief. 

"Look, Eff, I don't think I actually believe it," Peeta says, as Effie meanders her way into the kitchen. Haymitch is standing by the open icebox, a dark glass bottle in his hand that makes her shoulders tense up with alarm again, but at her entrance, he looks up and hands it to her without a word. She squints at it - a bit chagrined to realize that it's the fermented tea they sell at the Hob. "He didn't burn them at all. And in fact, he _seasoned_ them!"

"You told me to," Haymitch grumbles, retrieving his coffee cup from the top of the icebox and slamming it shut with his hip. Katniss, sitting at the small table and chopping some greens with a knife, snorts. "Have a seat, Eff. Thought we'd eat in here - the living room's a mess."

Peeta huffs out a laugh. "You could've cleaned."

"He fired his housekeeper again," Katniss confides, clearing a small space at the kitchen table for Effie to sit. Smiling tentatively, Effie gestures at the pile of vegetables waiting to be chopped, and Katniss nods, handing her another knife. "Can't keep one around for more than a couple weeks."

"Don't need a housekeeper," Haymitch says, so stubborn and loud it sounds more like a bray. "She was snooping around in the bedrooms, anyway."

Effie frowns. "What? Really?"

"Yeah. Going through my clothes and shit. Creepy." Haymitch joins them at the table, his coffee cup refilled, steaming hot and fragrant. "And the one before that kept trying to sleep with me."

Katniss' laughter is sharp and sudden. "And you couldn't abide that, obviously."

"She was half my age."

"She was sweet," Peeta says, turning from the counter, grinning over his shoulder. "It was just a crush."

"'Just a crush,' right," Haymitch repeats, rolling his eyes. To Effie, he says, "remember that girl who used to bribe her way into the Penthouse with her - "

"Oh Good Lord," Effie interrupts, before he can finish the sentence. "Yes. Don't remind me. The poor thing."

"What?" Katniss asks, her eyes sparkling. "Haymitch, did you have _groupies?_ "

"Shut the fuck up," Haymitch says, and both Peeta and Katniss laugh. Effie bites her lip against a smile, chopping a piece of squash slowly and carefully. It feels so very nice, to hear them all laughing together. She's not sure she's ever heard it before in person. "I'm not hiring another one. They want me to," Haymitch says, turning his head again, like he's only talking to Effie. "They're worried I'm gonna drop dead one morning and nobody will be around to find me."

"Don't joke about that, Haymitch," Effie says sharply, frowning. Both Katniss and Haymitch look at her in unison, their matching grey eyes growing serious at her tone. Effie clamps down on another smile. "The geese would surely find you. They need to be fed twice a day, after all."

It feels good to make them laugh, too. Another thing that she's almost sure has never happened before. 

The food is delicious because Peeta cooked it, and Effie feels warm and happy because she's there, surrounded by three of her favorite people in the world, and all of them are smiling. It's almost like a dream, to see Katniss and Peeta like this, and Haymitch besides - no glass of liquor in his hand, his face animated and alive, answering questions, holding conversation. It had been a rare thing, for many years, to see him acting like a living person. Effie used to hoard the memories of those rare instances like gifts, tucking them into a corner of her heart that no one could touch.

During the war, when she was in prison, she used to imagine that's what they would find if they ever cut her open - and they'd certainly threatened to enough times - a lockbox, buried in the blood and viscera inside of her chest, and inside would be little labeled compartments with all of her best memories: _the time Haymitch and Cinna bought me flowers for my birthday,_ or _my father telling me he loved me._ It was how she'd endured it all - keeping them safe, opening them up one by one and thinking about them, when she needed to. 

Most people are lockboxes, Effie sometimes thought. Just puzzles, and the key to getting what you wanted from someone was simply solving the riddle. This made her an excellent Escort, and a passable Rebel spy, and a terrible friend, she figured. Nobody liked to feel examined, least of all a man like Haymitch, who didn't even examine himself. No wonder he had to stop talking to her. 

Still, she thinks: _he's talking to you now,_ with a small, delicate feeling in her chest, like a flower blooming. Peeta keeps handing her things off of his own plate to taste, and Effie drips salad dressing down her chin and wipes it off with the back of her hand, which makes Haymitch laugh loudly. He says something sort of scathing about table manners, which would've hurt if he weren't smiling at her as he said it, and Effie shrugs at them all and says, "I never really meant any of those things I said. Well - I meant them, I suppose. But I didn't _care._ Like I give a whit how any of you eat."

"You were trying to get us ready for the cameras," Katniss says, nodding her head. "We knew. Well - not at the time. But we know now."

"You did very well despite me," Effie says proudly. "Hardly needed my help at all."

"That's not true," Peeta says, frowning. Haymitch is quiet, his face rather distant, scraping his fork through the remnants of his salad. "I needed you most of all, Eff."

Effie thinks very suddenly about the hospital in Thirteen, and how Peeta would visit most afternoons, even though he refused to speak to her, and would usually snap or insult her if she tried speaking to him. But he would still come and sit near her bed, staring into space, his arms crossed, and by the time she was well enough to be released, he was sitting very close, and asking questions. Some of which Effie could even answer. 

"Peeta," she says, her throat very thick. He smiles at her warmly, like he knows exactly what she's thinking about, and hands her another piece of steak from his plate, even though she still has almost half of her own left. She eats it in one bite. "This is just so very good."

"He makes the sauce from scratch," Katniss says proudly, and hands her another dinner roll. Effie eats that, too. 

Dessert is bread, of course, an intricate-looking construction with layers of chocolate and pistachio cushioned between thick, sweet dough. Katniss slices it with a large kitchen knife, solemnly, with a certain air of ceremony, and Peeta gives them all bowls of warm cream to dip the pieces in. 

"One of the settlers taught me this recipe," Peeta explains, "it's a very old take on bread pudding. They used rosewater thickened with cornflour, when they couldn't get milk or cream."

"It's one of the only things I can eat right now, actually. I guess the baby likes chocolate," Katniss says, her piece already torn up and mixed into her cream, an unappealing soup-like mush that she's eating with relish. "Even Haymitch likes it."

"You don't normally like sweets," Effie says in surprise. He only shrugs in response, having grown quieter as dinner has progressed. She can see the strain in his face; he never did have much energy for too much talking in one place, for very long. To take mercy on him, Effie turns to Peeta. "Of course it's going to be delicious, I don't even have to try it to know."

"Do try it though," Peeta says. "I've never added pistachio before."

Effie does. Obviously it's heavenly. "My mother used to make something similar to this," she says, "only she didn't make so many layers. She would bake a normal loaf of bread, then hollow out the middle and put in some kind of filling. Chocolate and fruit, mostly."

"Hadn't thought of fruit," Peeta says, smiling in sudden excitement. "Maude and Eddy are growing figs. Those would bake up well."

"I've been seeing blackberries lately, out in the woods. I could pick you some," Katniss says. 

"Such a provider," Peeta says, grinning at Effie. Katniss rolls her eyes, unsmiling, but now that Effie knows her much better, she can see that it's words that matter with Katniss. She never says anything she doesn't mean. "I don't think you've ever spoken to us about your mother before, Effie."

"She died when I was very young," Effie says, chewing slowly. She can feel Haymitch's eyes on her, still and quiet on the other side of the table. He'd taken the heel of the loaf and he's eating around the largest bits of chocolate, she notices with fondness. "My father was a professor. He was very smart, he went very quickly through his schooling, so he was still quite young when he started teaching. His parents - my grandparents - insisted on him living with them until he was married, and that's how he met her - she worked as a maid for my grandmother. It was quite the scandal, when they eloped together. She was much older than he was, too - almost fifteen years older."

"How did she die?" Katniss asks, with characteristic bluntness. Peeta frowns at her chastisingly, but Effie smiles at them both, unoffended. 

"She was arrested and executed for adultery," she says gently, watching them both react. She waits for them to process it before she continues. "It was a lie, though. She loved my father very much. They killed her because she offended one of my father's students. He taught at the Academy - most of the Gamemakers and politicians matriculated there."

A somewhat heavy silence falls, that Haymitch immediately - and gracefully - disrupts. "Heard stories about her," he says. "That's how Effie and Cinna met. Did he ever tell you?" Haymitch tilts his head in Katniss' direction, who shakes her head. "They were related, through marriage. Cinna's mother's second husband - "

"Third, actually," Effie corrects. 

"Alright, third - married Effie's mother's...brother? Was it?"

"Yes," Effie says. "We used to tell people we were cousins, just to keep it simple."

"Wait - his _ex_ -stepfather married your uncle? Is that right?" Peeta asks. "Does that still count as a relation?"

"It did for us," Effie says with a laugh. "They used to throw these grand parties, and they'd invite anyone they knew - romantic entanglements aside. Cinna and I didn't know each other that well growing up, but when I became an Escort he sought me out. A friendly face was a rare and valuable thing, in the Games."

"He recruited us both for the Rebellion," Haymitch says, and Peeta and Katniss nod, like they already knew that. "And he tried to stop them from making you an Escort, Eff. He told me that before he died, one night when we were drinking."

Effie startled a little, laying down her fork. "I knew that," she says. She just hadn't known Haymitch knew. "He felt very guilty about it. As if it was his fault."

Katniss shakes her head a little, her eyes glinting in the candlelight. "He tried to save everybody he met," she says quietly. "He was just that sort of person, wasn't he?"

"Very much so," Effie says, remembering Cinna's earnestness, the unyielding, stubborn morality that used to give Effie nervous fits, worrying herself to death every time he was in front of a camera, hoping with all her might that he wouldn't say anything dangerous. "My father always hoped that we would get married. We were both very sad to disappoint him, but he and Portia really were...meant to be." She sighs sadly, thinking of beautiful, quiet Portia, and the terrible way she'd died. 

Haymitch's mouth twitches. "You two never…?" he gestures obscenely, and Katniss snorts loudly with laughter, a sound that effectively shatters the serious air at the table. "I always thought you were. Back in the day, when he was still working for Seven. Before he met Portia."

"No," Effie says primly, rolling her eyes. "And my answer is not going to change, no matter how many times you ask me."

"You wanted to, though," Haymitch shoots back, and Effie blinks at him, unsure how to take the tone in his voice, and the oddly insistent look on his face. 

"Stop teasing her," Peeta says, in the next moment, and the look disappears, replaced by a smirk. Effie's shoulders relax. "I'm sure she only dated the most upstanding and handsome of Capitol men - "

"Cinna was handsome," Katniss argues, a bit of a flush to her cheeks that makes Peeta grin knowingly, and Haymitch roll his eyes. 

"I didn't date anybody, thank you very much," Effie interrupts, laughing. "Those overinflated peacocks at the parties just wanted in my skirts, nothing more. And there's no way they would've given me permission to date seriously, let alone _marry_ anybody - I was barely into my thirties, and they never let Escorts that young have real relationships - "

"They didn't _let_ you?" Katniss interrupts, disgust twisting her voice. 

"Well, no. There was a very strict code of conduct for Escorts, and of course I was watched very closely," Effie says. "You knew this already. Didn't you?"

Haymitch shakes his head silently, his face gone dark again. Peeta reaches out to touch Katniss' wrist, and Effie watches them communicate silently in the silent, almost psychic manner of couples who have been together for far longer than they have. But they've always been like that - Katniss and Peeta. They fit together like puzzle pieces, from the very beginning. 

"That's awful," Katniss says finally, shortly, like she's angry. 

"It wasn't so bad," Effie continues, nervously. "I had food and a place to live, and I wasn't in physical danger, as long as I did what I was supposed to. There were others in much worse positions than me."

"Still awful," Katniss says. She scoops up the last of her bread and cream - more like a soup, at this point - and shoves the spoon in her mouth. As she chews, she eyes Effie like she used to when she was younger - like she's sizing her up. "Couldn't your father do anything? To stop them from picking you?"

"He died too, not long after her mother passed," Haymitch interrupts, before Effie can answer. "Mind your business, kid. Jesus."

"It's alright," Effie says, but Katniss is rolling her eyes, reaching out to punch Haymitch's shoulder. Both of them are smiling slyly, like it's a joke. 

"'M just asking," Katniss says. "Effie doesn't mind."

"That's right, I don't," Effie says.

"Well, maybe I mind," Haymitch says, as if Effie hadn't spoken. He reaches out to tug on one of Katniss' braids, which makes her squawk in offense, like an angry cat. "Don't be fucking rude in my fucking house."

"Fuck you," Katniss sputters, and kicks him under the table. Haymitch jumps back so roughly the whole table rattles. 

"Alright," Peeta says, rolling his eyes at Effie. "That's our cue to leave the table. You want some coffee, Eff?"

"Yes," Effie says, neatly picking up her bowl of cream as the table rattles again, saving it from sloshing all over the tablecloth. "That would be lovely."

Peeta takes the bowl from her with an amused little smile. The table rattles again, screeching across the floor as Haymitch and Katniss continue squabbling, and Effie pushes back from it with a nervous smile, saving her poor feet from being trampled. "Perhaps I'll come help you make it?"

"Good idea," Peeta says. 

Peeta takes her on a tour of the house, as Katniss and Haymitch wrap up their little wrestling match ("just because you're pregnant doesn't mean I'm gonna take it easy on you," Effie hears Haymitch saying, his voice loud enough to be heard from all the way down the hallway) and then stomp outside in their snow boots to feed the geese together. Walking up the stairs to the second floor, Effie pauses by the window on the landing and watches them treading through the yard together, a bucket held between them and a lantern in Haymitch's free hand, swinging back and forth as they continue to bicker. 

"Like a couple of hens," Peeta says fondly, "always pecking at each other."

"They both seem so much better," Effie says, in a quiet voice, and Peeta nods. 

"They are," he replies. "And how are you, Effie?"

She smiles, shrugging with one shoulder, and he squeezes her hand. 

"Yeah, me too," he says. 

There are two bedrooms upstairs, one for Haymitch - thankfully Peeta doesn't try to show her that room - and one for "guests," which is an efficient way of saying that it never gets used. Sure, there's a bed in it, and something resembling a dresser, but there's also a table saw and a blue tarp, and an array of things half-built set up in various spots on the floor. Sawdust litters every surface and the large windows have little sets of numbers - measurements - and diagrams written on them in blue marker, like he couldn't be bothered to go get a proper pad of paper. Typical, Effie thinks. 

"He kept saying it would be too much effort to clean up this room for you, but it probably would've taken half the time as fixing up the house did. I think he was actually just trying to give you some space," Peeta confides. Effie wanders into the room tentatively, leaning down to pick up what looks like a shelf of some kind, small enough to hold in one hand but carved with a delicate vine design that Effie recognizes as a type of ivy that only grows in District Four. "You do like it, don't you? It's not too small?"

"Peeta, I adore it," Effie says genuinely, putting the shelf carefully back down on the tarp-covered floor. "I really do."

He seems to relax, a little. "Good."

"You really didn't have to go to all this trouble for me though," Effie says. "It's so sweet of all of you, honestly, but - "

"Effie," Peeta interrupts, shaking his head, "shut up."

Effie claps her palm over her mouth, chagrined, and he laughs. 

Haymitch and Katniss are back inside by the time they make their way back downstairs, talking quietly by the front door in a way that looks rather serious, although they both look up and shake it off instantly at Effie and Peeta's arrival. 

"The monsters have been fed," Katniss says gravely, crossing her arms across her chest. 

"Do you mean the geese, or us?" Effie asks, and grins when she gets another laugh. "Oh Katniss, my girl. It was so good to see you."

"Yeah," Katniss says, submitting herself to another hug. "It was good to see you too, Eff. You should've come sooner."

"I know," Effie admits, not even stung by the scolding note to her voice. She's right. "I have no good excuse. I was just busy, and scatterbrained. That's all."

"Busy smuggling money?" Peeta asks, laughing when Effie glares at him over Katniss' shoulder. "Oh right. That's meant to be a secret."

"I have _no_ idea what you're talking about," Effie says again, and hugs him too. She makes eye contact, very briefly, with Haymitch as she and Peeta embrace, and feels a chill run down her spine at the serious, tender look on his face. 

"Can we walk you home?" Peeta jokes, pulling back from the hug, his cheeks flushed. 

"Yeah, we'll protect you from the squirrels," Katniss says. 

"Well, _Katniss_ will," jokes Peeta. 

"I'll walk her home later," Haymitch cuts in, firmly enough that all three of them startle. "Eff, I was going to help you write that letter. Remember?"

"Ah, right," Effie says. It was a code they'd used often, to steal some time alone to talk - _help her write a letter_ was vague and mysterious enough that depending on who it was they were making the excuse to, they would come to all sorts of conclusions. As the years passed, most people just concluded that they were sleeping together - a rather effective cover for what they were usually doing, namely: colluding to take down the government. Both of them dangerous activities, to be sure, but with very different contexts. "Yes, I suppose Haymitch will see me home in a bit. Will I see you both tomorrow?"

Both Katniss and Peeta had looks on their faces like they knew very well there would not be any letters written tonight. "Sure," Peeta says. "You can come with me to the bakery if you want. Katniss is going hunting again, but she usually stops by for lunch."

"It's a plan," Effie promises. The nerves in her stomach make her hands shake a little as they hug again, and the sympathetic squeeze Peeta gives her makes her suspect he can tell. 

Having seen them out, the air feels thick and serious between them, which doesn't do much to help Effie's nerves. Haymitch leads her back into the kitchen without a word, his palm light against the top of her shoulder, and hands her another bottle of tea from his icebox. 

"I would offer you something stronger, if I had it," he says, joining her in the seat that Peeta had been in earlier, next to Effie's elbow. "I usually keep at least one bottle around, but Peeta or Katniss must've gotten rid of it. They do that, when they find it." He sounds torn between exasperation and fondness - how he often sounds, when speaking of the children. 

"Why do you keep it around at all then?" Effie says, modulating her voice very carefully so that she doesn't sound judgmental. She can see him tense up anyway, in response to the question. 

"I still have bad nights," Haymitch says. He has his own bottle of tea as well, and he uses the edge of the table to pop the cap off. Reaching out, he opens Effie's bottle the same way, without being asked. "I'm mostly off of it though. Got through the detoxes again, last winter."

"That's wonderful," Effie says quietly, meaning it with her whole heart. "Do you feel better? Physically, I mean?"

"Most days." He shrugs. "I, ah. It was around the time that we fought. On the phone."

Effie instantly feels lightheaded. "Oh."

"I don't remember what I said to you. But I'm awful fucking sorry for it anyway," Haymitch continues, his jaw set, like he's determined to get the words out and into the air. "Peeta and Nathan - they were with me through the worst of it - took the phone out of the house so I wouldn't call you again, and upset you, like I did. Peeta was pretty sore at me for that." He rubs his forehead, and Effie notices with some shock a nasty scar on his wrist, like a burn mark, that goes all the way up his forearm. It looks as if it's still healing - not completely scarred over. He hadn't had that before, Effie thinks. She's only just noticed it, trying as hard as she has been not to look at him. 

"How did you get that?" she asks. 

"What?" Haymitch yanks his hand down, looking taken aback. "Oh. This?" He holds up his wrist. "Katniss' cat...the one who belonged to her sister?" Effie nods. "Stupid thing fell into a campfire one night. He's losing his brains, now that he's old."

"So you just...reached in?" Effie asks, with some horror. She reaches out tentatively, wanting to touch the wound, and to her surprise, he lets her. Pressing her thumb gently against the mottled tissue, Effie shivers. It must've been very painful, for it to still be so raw looking. "She must've been quite angry with you."

Haymitch huffs out a laugh, staring at her fingers, softly pressing against his wrist. "Yeah. Screeched at me so loud it woke the geese up. But the cat lived, so." He shrugs.

Effie smiles, pulling her hand away. She feels like she's about to vibrate out of her skin, sitting there so close to him, touching his skin. Her hands are still shaking - she hopes he hasn't noticed. 

"You're tryin' to change the subject," Haymitch says quietly, after a beat of silence. "Don't think I didn't notice."

"I wasn't," Effie says, blinking. "I mean, your wrist was right there in front of my face, and I hadn't noticed the burn before just now, and - "

"Can you just stop for a second? Just stop," Haymitch says, reaching out to touch her chin with that same hand, pressing the back of his knuckles against the angle of her jaw. Effie's voice dies in her throat. "It's been almost a year since I got to talk to you. I don't wanna do it like this, like we're strangers. Come on."

"As we established already," Effie says slowly, swallowing back the lump in her throat, "that was a decision you made, entirely independent of my input."

Haymitch's mouth quirks, but his expression is dark, almost angry. "I know."

"And you still haven't explained why."

"I know," he says again, folding his hands together on the tabletop. Effie looks at them instead of at his face. They're large and wide, solid-looking hands, the hands of a man who would've been a miner, had fate chosen differently all those years ago. She used to sit there in the Penthouse and watch those hands wrap themselves around wine stems and highball glasses, and think to herself, _what I wouldn't give, to have those on me._ For years, she's dreamed about it. 

"If it was something I said, or - if I was making your recovery more difficult, I apologize. But the least you could've done was explained - "

"It wasn't anything you did," Haymitch interrupts shortly. "I just - I couldn't _talk_ to you." The inflection is different, from how he'd said it before. "Do you understand? I couldn't make the words...sit right. They always came out wrong. I only ever made you upset, made you cry."

Effie doesn't respond, because that's certainly true enough. She'd never held it against him, though. 

"Do you remember…" he ruffles his hair restlessly, leaning his weight against his elbow, next to his untouched tea bottle. "District Three? Out on the islands. During the Victory Tour, the 67th."

"Yes," Effie says, in a whisper. They'd rented an ostentatious boat with a discreet crew, and Effie had made a lot of noise about 'slipping away' with a 'very good friend' during the Tour, so anyone who might suspect anything would just think they were off to have some torrid sex on a beach, instead of what they were actually doing, which was meeting Plutarch Heavensbee for the first time. He'd been working out there in Three, at the time - a lot of Gamemakers started out in highly skilled specialty fields. Plutarch had made a lot of money as a young hologram technologist in Three. "I was so sure they'd catch us, that it was too conspicuous to attend the Tour. We never had before." All the mentors and Escorts were, technically, invited to every year's Victory Tour, but they rarely attended if they didn't have a Victor. Naturally, that meant that Haymitch and Effie almost never went.

"That mother of the Victor that year - what the fuck was her name - "

"Tatiana Braun," Effie supplies.

"Right." Haymitch grimaces. "She liked me. She was one of my, you know. Dates."

Effie covers her mouth with her hand, closing her eyes. "I thought so. I wasn't sure, but." She doesn't know what to say. 

"It's alright. It was a long time ago," Haymitch says, waving away her reaction. "Anyway, that's how I knew we'd be safe. I always sort of suspected that Plutarch set it up - got her turned onto me, so that we'd have the excuse."

"Sounds like him," Effie says. "Haymitch, why are we talking about this?"

"Well, I was just thinking, you know. About after Plutarch left, the last few days on that boat. You wore that dress…" Haymitch trails off, gesturing. Effie's skin prickles. "You were so young. I felt like a dirty old man every time I looked at you."

"I was twenty-two," Effie says, halfway offended. "A grown woman, thank you very much."

"Younger than me," Haymitch counters, rubbing his beard. It was as unkempt as it ever was, which was unfortunately twice as attractive to Effie, here in this kitchen, over tea instead of liquor. "I always feel ancient next to you."

Effie feels no less offended by this. "You're not _old_ ," she says. "You're traumatized. There's a difference."

Haymitch barks out a laugh. "Really," he says. 

"Yes. And so am I," she says, feeling brave to say it out loud. She squares her shoulders, taking a deep breath. "Listen Haymitch, I don't know why you're bringing this up now. We agreed it didn't mean anything, and I haven't bothered you about it even once, in all these years. If you're lonely, or - or if you need companionship - well, that's fine, that's understandable, but you must know why you cannot do that to me - after all these years, my God Haymitch, you _must_ know - "

"Jesus," Haymitch interrupts, looking rather violently taken aback, "no. Is that why - that's not why I invited you here, or asked you to stay after they left. Jesus, give me some credit, Eff."

"Well what else am I supposed to think?" Effie asks, firming her jaw against the emotion, not wanting it to show on her face. Judging by how horrified he looks, she's not all that successful. "You plot with the kids to get me here, but you don't want me in your house. You don't want to talk to me, you say you can't, but then you sit here and start bringing up ancient history like it's - well, you know, words have _implications,_ Haymitch! You can't just bring _that_ up and not expect me to think - that you're thinking things!"

"Well, I _am_ thinking things," Haymitch replies furiously, "and I never said I didn't want you in my house. What the fuck?"

"Peeta said you didn't want me in your spare bedroom," Effie says, rubbing furiously at her face. She will _not_ cry. She refuses. 

"Of course I don't," Haymitch says, so stridently he's almost shouting. "I want you here. I want you in my house. But not in the _spare_ bedroom. Obviously!"

All the air goes out of the room. Effie blinks at him stupidly for a long second, and then rips her eyes away, staring at her tea until the sight goes watery with tears. 

"Great," Haymitch huffs, after a tense second. "And I've made you cry again. Beautiful." He sighs, handing her a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, stained at the edges with grease. Effie scoffs at it, her pride stung, so embarrassed she can barely stand to look at him, and he sighs again, placing it gently on the table next to her elbow. "I'm sorry."

"I am not going to have sex with you tonight," Effie says furiously in response, and he holds up his hands, blowing out another long, tense breath. 

"Yes. I mean obviously, I know that," he says, sounding a little chagrined. "I didn't - that's not why I asked you to stay. Honest."

Effie gives up the ghost and picks up the handkerchief, wiping her cheeks with it gingerly. It smells like motor oil. 

"And that's not what we agreed," Haymitch says, still sounding half-heated, like he's remembering how angry he is and getting a second wind. "We agreed it was _dangerous._ See, this is why I couldn't talk to you - you're always putting words in my mouth - "

"You said it couldn't mean anything," Effie bites out, "you said you didn't want the trouble it would bring down on us, that I would be better off with one of those 'Capitol bastards,' that's a _direct quote,_ Haymitch - "

"I was a Quell Victor, Effie," Haymitch interrupts angrily, leaning forward and spreading his palm flat on the table, in Effie's line of eyesight. Startled, she looks up at his face and instantly regrets it, feeling warm and tense all over. "You know what they did to my family, to my fiancée. You were young back then, you hadn't seen the worst of it yet. You still had a chance to get out, to marry some rich fuckoff and spare yourself all of it - "

"And where would I have ended up, had I done that?" Effie demands. "Dead, in the war? Shot by Thirteen's soldiers? Or a Capitol loyalist, who would've starved to death in one of Coin's prisons? You never wanted me to get involved with the Rebellion anyway, you never believed I was capable of helping. You thought I was too spoiled, too naive - "

"I was trying to _protect_ you," Haymitch says, slamming his hand on the table. One of the tea bottles falls over with a clunk, and tea pours out in a smooth line, pouring over the flat surface in a wave of dark liquid. Frozen in surprise for a moment, both Effie and Haymitch react at the same time, pushing back from the table. Haymitch reaches out and grabs the overturned bottle, cursing under his breath at the mess. 

"I'll get - where do you keep your towels?" Effie asks, rising to her feet. 

"Ah hell, just leave it," Haymitch says. He grabs the other bottle as well - both of them completely untouched - and dumps them both in the sink. "I'll get it in the morning."

"You can't just _leave_ it, Haymitch, it's fermented! It'll stink up your whole house," Effie says. She opens the drawers in the kitchen one by one, looking for anything to clean up the mess. "It'll only take a second."

"The one to your left. By the sink," Haymitch says, staring at the puddle with his hands on his hips, breathing hard. He's still angry, clearly. "Let me do it."

"I can help," Effie insists, pulling out a clean towel.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Fine," Haymitch snaps, throwing up one of his hands. "If you fucking insist. I need a minute."

"Fine," Effie snaps back. 

"Fine!" He doesn't look at her, turning on one heel and striding out of the room. After a second, she hears the back door slam, making her jump. 

Standing still, she listens for a second, waiting to hear the sound of his boots on the patio, or the door opening again. But there's nothing - just a moving shadow, the outline of his shoulders that she can see through the window in the dark. Effie bites her lip and tries very hard not to cry, and spends a very long time mopping up the spill. Her hands stink of the tea when she finishes, the earthy, yeasty smell making her stomach roil. 

Why does he keep giving it to her anyway? Effie looks in the fridge and sees an entire case of it, clearly from the Hob. It probably reminds him of beer, she thinks bitterly, and pours herself a glass of water instead. As usual, he assumes and doesn't ask. Whether he's embarrassed or inept or just rude, the result is always the same. 

It was only a _kiss._ That was the worst part. They'd been out on that terribly romantic boat, alone for the first time - a rare sort of alone, no cameras or soldiers, just an uninterested boat captain and the fish in the water to overhear - and she'd been wearing a very simple dress that she felt beautiful in. And Haymitch had looked at her like she was beautiful. He was thirty-three at the time and he only drank with other people, back then. He touched her face and he kissed her, and then he pulled away and told her to go marry some man in the Capitol and forget about him, and Effie shut herself up in one of the cabin bedrooms for the rest of the trip while he got drunk on the deck, both of them waking up the next morning with hangovers - his from sunburn and liquor, hers from crying. And they never talked about it again. 

She's finished one glass of water and has refilled it for a second round by the time he comes back inside, stomping his boots on the ground like he wants to make sure she knows he's coming. Effie leans against the counter and waits, plastering the sternest look possible on her face, and he still looks up at her like he's surprised she's still standing there. 

They stare at each other in heavy silence for a beat, and then Haymitch asks, "do you want me to walk you home?"

"Do you want me to leave?" Effie asks, stung. She puts her water glass down on the counter without looking, and nearly burns herself on one of the lit candles by the sink. "I thought you just needed a minute."

"I did. But I'm trying to be respectful," Haymitch says reproachfully, like he's put out that she's not giving him more credit. Effie's scowl deepens. "I mean, we can keep fighting if you want, I guess. If you wanna yell at me, I probably deserve it."

"My God. You are _so_ frustrating," Effie says, flustered. "You're the one who started the fight in the first place!"

Haymitch screws his face up. "Well, that's debatable - "

"No it isn't!" Effie interrupts furiously, pointing at him angrily. "You started it! You _always_ start it. All I ever do is ask you questions and then you start yelling, and you know that hurts my feelings! What do you want me to do - not get upset? Do you want me to just sit there and let you do whatever you want, and never have any feelings or opinions about anything?"

"Goddamn it, Effie. No," Haymitch says stridently, his brow furrowed with emotion. He swallows, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his hands clenched at his sides. "No, you can - you can feel however you want. You can do whatever you want and _say_ whatever you want, so long as you keep _talking_ to me - "

" _You_ stopped talking to _me,_ " Effie says, anguished, her chest heaving. Haymitch's face is frozen, shadowed in candlelight, and Effie feels cut in half, torn asunder by the long line of his body, standing in the doorway. He looks like he's thirty-three again in the dim light, no gray in his hair, steady hands, no rasp in his voice. The two images bend and slide over top of each other in front of Effie's eyes: thirty-three and forty-five - before a war, and after. He doesn't look all that different now, if one doesn't look too closely. Or if one is predisposed to look with affection, which Effie unfortunately, persistently is. "Did you know, I called Peeta every day that week, trying to figure out why your phone had been disconnected? He didn't pick up, of course he didn't - because he was taking care of you, wasn't he? A grown man, more than twice his age, and you still need him to cook your dinner and clean your house."

Haymitch's face doesn't move, but he inhales sharply, his mouth pursing. "Effie."

"And I _kept_ calling," Effie says, something tight and high-strung winding its way around her throat. Her vision is blurring. "I kept trying your number, for months. Obviously you got a new one, but I kept thinking - 'oh, he'll let me know somehow.' But you didn't, and when I finally got ahold of Peeta he wouldn't give me your new one, and he sounded so terribly uncomfortable, and Katniss of course wouldn't say a word about you, she just changed the subject and hung up on me if I tried to pry - and you didn't answer any of my letters either, you probably weren't even reading them, and I can't believe I was so foolish to think that - that you would be kind to me - "

" _Effie,_ " Haymitch interrupts, his voice scraping roughly against his throat. He leans hard, suddenly, against the door jam. "Sweetheart, please. That's not true."

"Being kind to me _now,_ " Effie says shrilly, covering her eyes with one shaky hand, so she doesn't have to look at his face anymore, "it's cruel. I don't know why you're doing this but it's cruel. You should just leave me alone, I'm not - I can't make you feel better, obviously, and I don't even know why I'm here, why you're even bothering to pretend - "

"Stop it," Haymitch interrupts, sounding almost angry. Effie tenses, hearing him come clomping over, but his hand on her wrist is gentle as he pulls her hand down, his fingertips only lightly brushing her skin. "Just stop. None of that is true. Eff, come on, you have to know it's not true."

"I don't know anything," Effie says miserably, her eyes shut. 

He smells like the woods, standing so close to her. Like the air outside - smoke and dirt and a hint of coal, even after all these years. "Please, honey. Look at me."

"No," Effie says stubbornly, biting the inside of her cheek. She hears him take another unsteady breath, the exhale brushing over her forehead and ruffling her hair.

"Okay. I deserve all that," Haymitch says, still holding his hand precariously against her wrist. "Just listen, then. I read your letters."

Effie holds her breath. 

"I read all of them, and I kept them. And I wanted to call," he says painfully, like each word is a struggle. "Because I missed you. I always miss you. Even when you're standing right in front of me, I miss you." A barely-there touch, knuckles against the edge of her chin. Effie lets her breath go in a long breath, her shoulders shaking. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't talk to you. It's not - it's not because I don't - " he pauses. "You know. Goddamn it, I'm so fucking bad at this."

Effie opens her eyes, unable to stop herself, and sees him rubbing his face. His palm is so big it covers half his features. Quickly, she closes her eyes again, before he can catch her looking. 

"I couldn't talk to you because it made me want to drink," he says in the next beat, and Effie makes an involuntary noise of pain, something wrenched out of her against her will. He touches her face again, quickly, talking before she fully absorbs the hit. "But not like that, not how you think. It's not because of you, sweetheart, it just made me feel so crazy, it made me feel like shit. Hearing your voice, listening to you talk, how sweet you are, and how - how _good_ you are - it made me feel worse. And it's not your fault. It's mine, it's me. All I do is hurt you, Effie. It's all I've ever done."

Effie lets that sit, for a moment, hugging her arms around her ribcage like her heart will spill out onto the floor if she doesn't keep holding it in. She can hear him breathing heavily, like the words themselves exhausted him. She's not sure she's ever heard him say so many emotional words, all at the same time. Not even during the war, was he ever so honest. 

"Well, that's not true," she says, after a moment. Her voice trembles a little, and she opens her eyes, but keeps her gaze low, on his chest. One of his hands is braced against the kitchen chair next to them, knuckles white. "You're a good man. You got me out of the Capitol, Haymitch. You got me immunity."

"You should've had it in the first place!" he says furiously. "You helped them just as much as that Cardew woman did, if not more - "

"I was a very visible mouthpiece for the Snow administration," Effie says, feeling her calm center back down around her shoulders a little. "And most of the people who could vouch for my efforts were dead, by then. It was understandable that no one trusted me."

"Plutarch trusted you," Haymitch argues. Effie finally looks at his face, which is set and angry. Not at all neutral. "I trusted you. The kids all trusted you. More than they trusted me." He struggles for words, for a moment. "It should've been you, in Thirteen. Helping Katniss with the propos, organizing everything. Getting Jo back to health. You would've done a better job than me."

"Haymitch," Effie says, faltering a little. "I'm not so sure that's true. But thank you for saying it."

"It's true," Haymitch says stubbornly, his face softening a little. He touches her face again, more boldly, pressing his palm against her cheek. Effie leans into the touch, her whole body shivering. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I am. I'll say it a million times, if you need me to."

"I don't," Effie says, her tears spilling over, onto his hand. "Just the once was fine. I just - it hurt, Haymitch, and - I know how you think when you're at your lowest, and I know you don't feel like you...exist, to other people," Effie says, struggling to articulate. "But it hurts, when you do these things to me. Not because you say the wrong thing, but because you don't even try. Don't you see?"

"Yeah," Haymitch says hoarsely, bringing his other hand up to her face as well, holding it gently between both of his palms. Effie lets her weight fall against him, her head spinning a little, like it's floating a few feet up above her body, not fully attached. "I'm better now. I swear I am."

Effie never needed him to be _better._ She just wanted to be seen. To be looked at, and touched, and listened to. That's all. 

"I think," Effie says, after a long, long moment of indulgence, "I need you to walk me home now."

Haymitch tears his hands from her face so quickly she jerks backwards in surprise. His face is neutral again, though, when she lifts her face up to look. "Alright."

"I just, I think I need to sleep," Effie says weakly, her chest twisting at the tremble in his hands. His fists clench against his sides, when he notices her looking. "I just need to get some sleep, Haymitch. I'm upset, that's all."

"Alright," Haymitch says again, with some effort. He takes one step backwards, and then two, a gulf of air washing in-between them. "That's fine. I'll walk you."

Effie is silent for a moment, breathing heavily. "Should I bring a gun?" she jokes weakly. 

Haymitch blinks at her for a second, before his brain seems to catch up. "If you want to put me out of my misery, honey, you don't need a gun to do it."

"Don't joke about that," Effie says softly, and Haymitch smiles without humor. 

"Wasn't joking," he says, making that strange beckoning, waving gesture at her again. "Come on. I'll let you borrow a coat, you'll freeze to death in that."

Effie swallows thickly, pressing her clammy palms against the sides of her thighs, and follows. 

Effie sleeps in the next day, and misses tagging along with Peeta to the bakery as a result. She blames Haymitch - he'd insisted on building another fire for her before he left, and the warmth and sound of it had kept her up all night, anxious about falling asleep with it still burning. But wouldn't she have been up all night anyway, after a conversation like that? Debatable. (Probably.)

There's bread and honey in the little kitchen for breakfast, and Effie eats it on the deck, on the side that faces Peeta's house instead, not wanting to sit there and look at his window shutters, or possibly be looked at herself, for now she knows where his bedroom is, and what direction his window faces. She still feels itchy - restless, pulled in two directions - as if he's watching her anyway, through the walls of the house somehow. 

Most of the morning is spent in an argument with herself: go over, or not? More talking, or more silence? This is cut off rather abruptly by the arrival of Katniss, who appears at the treeline with a bow over her shoulder like a mirage - so silently and smoothly that Effie doesn't notice her at first. Effie blinks at her several times before she actually registers that she's really there - as if she were daydreaming. 

"Lunch," Katniss announces, coming to a graceful stop at the foot of the porch stairs. She looks up at Effie and frowns a little, swiping her sweaty bangs off her forehead with the back of one wrist. "Have you been sitting out here all morning? It's freezing out here."

"Oh, don't you start too," Effie says, flapping the lapel of Haymitch's coat, which she's still wearing. "I'm fine. Why did you even build the porch, if you didn't want me sitting on it?"

"You just look cold," Katniss says with a shrug. "Haymitch built it."

"I figured." Effie rises to her feet, only a little stiffly. Her knees had suffered the worst in prison; the doctors in Thirteen had to replace her left kneecap entirely with a prosthetic. She still has trouble bending down, and walking long distances, in the winters. "Did you want to go to the bakery, or eat here? I have a fire inside."

Katniss holds up a small pouch in reply, presumably with food inside, from the woods. "Peeta took the truck out to one of the settlements this morning anyway, he won't be back until late," she says. "Did you bring coffee from Four?"

"Enough to share, yes," Effie tells her, and for the first time since she's appeared, Katniss grins. 

The food is mostly supplemental, it turns out: Katniss takes the leftovers from the bag that Haymitch had brought over yesterday, and fashions together two sandwiches from an array of ingredients that Effie had never thought to combine before. Blackish blue berries from her pouch, and a slab of salted meat - on top of thick brown bread, and some greens from the pouch too, obviously freshly collected. Katniss dips her bread in the coffee Effie's prepared for her, unceremoniously, and slaps it on top of her own sandwich, taking measured bites with an air of comical determination. 

"I _have_ to start eating more protein," she tells Effie, dipping the corner of her sandwich in the coffee again, before she takes another bite. "It softens the bread. Quit lookin' at me like that."

"Like what?" Effie says blandly, and takes a bite of her own, coffee-free, sandwich. It's quite good. "What kind of plant is this, the greens on top?"

"Dandelions," Katniss replies. "Good for you. Lots of vitamins."

"I didn't know you could eat them." They taste almost like a type of genetically modified lettuce that Effie was used to eating in Eleven, that the locals simply called _greenery._ "And the meat is?"

"Beaver," Katniss says. "There's a river, about...oh, seven miles out? Much farther than I ever dared to go, you know, before." She takes another stubborn bite, brow furrowed. "You gotta be careful...that you don't kill too many. It collapses the colony, or the families, or whatever. Learned that lesson the hard way," she says ruefully, "but Haymitch called in a favor from somebody that his friend Chaff used to know, I guess? They sent an animal scientist out here to help get the population back to a stable level. He taught me how to hunt more carefully, so we don't completely wipe them out."

"That must be close to the old Covey encampment," Effie says thoughtfully. "Are they still there?"

Katniss looks a bit startled, but then her face darkens. "You mean the people that used to sing at the Hob?" Effie nods hesitantly, not actually sure if it was the same group. There were at least three different groups of Covey families, splintered off from each other, living in Twelve at various points in time. "No. No sign of them, since the war. They probably moved on, somewhere else."

"I hope they're alright," Effie murmurs, distracted by memories. She'd never met any of them in person, of course. But they used to send messages to and from the Rebels in coded jabberjay signals, which Haymitch taught her how to translate. Where _he'd_ learned it from, Effie still doesn't know.

"My mother always said they were criminals," Katniss says, in her blunt way. "The Coveys, I mean."

"No," Effie says gently, "they weren't."

"Obviously," Katniss retorts, but not snappishly so. She sounds more resigned, than anything. "I guess it was jealousy, anyway, that made her think that. There was a woman, before my mother, that my father loved. I think she was Covey. But he never talked about her. The only reason I even know is because I overheard my mom talking with one of her friends about it once, when I was little."

Effie hums sympathetically. "That must have been difficult for her. You shouldn't hold her words against her."

"Did you know them?" Katniss asks instead, tilting her head curiously. "Haymitch told me about some of the things you did. You and him and Undersee, back before Peeta and I were Reaped. The families you were smuggling out."

"We only managed to get three of them out," Effie confesses with a wince. "Can you believe it? Almost ten years, and we only managed three."

"More than zero," Katniss points out, oddly gentle. 

"Yes, well." Effie abandons her sandwich, not all that hungry. "I never met any of them, no. It was far too dangerous. At first, we weren't even sure they were actually there. We communicated through the jabberjays - did he tell you?" Katniss nods, a dry look on her face. "They've been nesting here in Twelve for over a hundred years. The messages could have been old - leftover from decades ago. We had no way of knowing at first - and it wasn't as if Haymitch could just walk outside the fence for a visit."

"No," Katniss says wryly, "not that far, anyway."

"That was our plan for you and Peeta, you know," Effie confesses. "After they announced what they were doing for the Quarter Quell, and before we found out about Thirteen. We were going to try and get you both out, somehow, if you'd agreed to go. We didn't know what the Covey were doing with refugees exactly, but we still trusted them more than the alternative."

"I never would have left my - " Katniss says, and falters so abruptly and painfully that Effie's heart clenches. Katniss presses one hand against her forehead, shuddering hard. "Sorry."

"No, darling, it's alright," Effie says softly, clenching her fists in her lap to keep herself from reaching out. "It's alright. I know."

Katniss sniffs twice, rubbing her face with the back of her hand, and then buries her face in her sandwich again, chewing so determinedly her jaw clicks. It takes _heroic_ effort for Effie not to say anything, but she doesn't. She's learned that allowing Katniss to break such silences is always the wisest option. 

And sure enough, after a moment, she does. "Haymitch told us this morning he upset you last night."

Effie blinks. "We had a fight, yes," she says. "But it was one that's been a long time coming."

Katniss nods, like she was expecting this answer. "Get it out in the air. It's good for you both."

"Yes, I think so," Effie agrees quietly. She forces herself to take another bite, not wanting to be rude by leaving her food half-finished. 

"You have to know what we're doing here," Katniss says, with her characteristic bluntness. Effie blinks again, rapidly, the tears in her eyes due to the overly large bite of food in her mouth more than any strong emotion. "It's okay if you don't know what you want to do yet. We know you have a home in Four, with Annie and Jo and the baby. But," Katniss scowls, a sure sign of something emotional forthcoming, and looks Effie in the eye. "We're having a baby soon, too."

"Finn isn't really a baby anymore," Effie says, after swallowing with some effort. "He's walking and talking. And yelling."

"Well, he's being half-raised by Johanna Mason," Katniss says. "It would be weird if he were quiet."

Effie laughs a little, pressing her fingertips to her mouth. "Yes."

Katniss takes another big bite too, and waits her out, watching her calmly as she chews. Effie feels oddly cared for, being stared down like that. Katniss has never been an affectionate person, and likely never will be, but she loves people like a hunter: fiercely, protectively, selfishly - and a little resentfully, too. She and Effie are very different people, but somehow over the years, they've managed to find something like an equilibrium. 

"I don't know what I should do," Effie finally says, after a long, prickly moment. Katniss doesn't flinch. "Of course I'll be around for you and Peeta and the baby, no matter what. You'll always have me, whenever you need me."

Katniss shrugs one shoulder, and doesn't reply. But Effie already knows that's not what she's asking. 

"I don't know that I'm good for him," Effie finally says, blinking rapidly. The tears this time are not because of the sandwich. "Or that he's good for me. How does one tell?"

Katniss snorts. "You think I know?" She shakes her head. "Peeta and I still fight all the time, you know. Haymitch doesn't know - Peeta doesn't like me to talk about it to other people. He thinks it's private, between us."

Effie tilts her head curiously at her, trying to look sympathetic, and Katniss makes a face. 

"It's never serious fighting, bad fighting," she says. "Don't tell him I told you. But we just - he gets on my nerves all the time, even now. And I know I trigger him, sometimes. Some mornings we wake up and I can tell that he's had a bad night, and he has trouble even looking at me. Sometimes I feel like he's still scared of me."

"Oh, darling," Effie says quietly, and dares to reach out her hand. Katniss goes very still, and allows Effie to touch her shoulder, her face freezing in some emotion halfway between hunger and disgust. 

"It's fine," Katniss says, practically choking the words out. Her eyelids flutter, and she instantly relaxes, the second Effie pulls her hand back. But she looks grateful, when she opens her eyes again, and she smiles at Effie as warmly as she ever has. "I still need him, and he needs me. But I'm scared we're going to fuck it up someday. I'm scared I won't be able to love the baby as much as he will, I'm scared he'll start to resent me, or that I'll start to resent him. I'm scared of so many things, Effie, I'm scared of everything."

"I think it's good to be scared," Effie says quietly, "I think it's good that you care enough to be scared."

"Right." Katniss pushes her plate aside, looking visibly nauseous. "So does it feel good, that you're scared? Or is that different?"

Effie doesn't know what to say. She doesn't know the answer to that question. 

"He's not ever going to say this to you," Katniss says quietly, looking very serious, "so I'll say it. He got sober for you. Peeta and I weren't enough to make him want to live, but you were. And he'll never admit it out loud, but it's the truth. We could tell."

Effie's head is spinning. "It's not fair," she says, "to put that on me. To tell me that, and make me feel like it's my responsibility to stay, to make him happy - "

"Which is why he's never going to say it to you," Katniss interrupts. "And you know that's not what I meant. Come on."

Effie covers her face with one of her palms, her hand shaking. 

"He'll be fine if you don't, I think," Katniss says thoughtfully. "Stay, I mean. I'm not trying to say, 'stay, or he'll kill himself,' because that's not true. He's got, you know, reasons now. Things to do everyday. He relapses more than he lets on, because he hides it well, but it never gets out of control anymore, which is good. But Effie - " Katniss raps her knuckles against the table, and Effie jerks her hand away to look at her, startled. "Being good for someone is about showing up. It's not just who you are, it's about what you do for them. And I know he wants to try. I mean Christ, look at this house, Eff - this is him telling you he wants to try."

Effie sits with that for a moment, just breathing. She thinks about her father and her mother, hopelessly and dismally in love, how every evening they would lock the doors in the little apartment where Effie grew up and breathe great sighs of relief, as if every day was a battle that they might not survive. Her earliest memories are of watching them kiss each other furiously, which they did almost incessantly when they were alone. It took Effie a long time to realize that not all mothers and fathers loved each other so desperately - that in fact, there were not many mothers and fathers that loved each other at all, in the Capitol. 

It did kill them eventually - that fierce, frantic love. Effie was scared of being in love as a result, until she fell in love herself, and realized that the act of loving itself wasn't nearly as terrifying as what people could do to you with it. 

"I never thought he would want me," Effie confesses. Katniss Everdeen is quite possibly the worst person on Earth to say this to, which is probably why Effie feels the urge to say it. To her credit, Katniss puts her food down to listen, her face calm and neutral. "I never thought, in a million years, that he would ever love me the way I wanted him to. And now that it's been so long, thinking that, I don't know how to...believe it."

Katniss doesn't say anything for a long moment, leaning her chin against her hand. "I never thought Peeta would love me either," she says finally. "I thought it was just a lie, in the beginning. That he loved a version of me that didn't exist. But he does love me." She shrugs. "You just...believe it, Effie. You keep looking him in the eye, until it sinks in. That's all."

But does she want to, is the question Katniss is really asking. Effie picks up her sandwich again, determined to finish, still not knowing the answer. 

The truth is, Effie is going to move out of Jo and Annie's house regardless of her choice regarding Twelve, something that she suspects Peeta already knows. (He and Annie talk on the phone, often.) He's been graceful and discreet enough not to let this slip to anyone - not even Katniss, it seems. Effie is grateful. 

It's not for a lack of welcome - if anything, it's because Effie is starting to get a little too comfortable there, seeing the rest of her life spool out before her, in that little patio room in Four. Watching over Finn as he grows older, Aunt Effie who works for the government, who spends more time on trains and hovercrafts than she does in his mothers' house. She feels like a visitor more than a housemate, most of the time. It's always an occasion when she's there - Annie cooks a big dinner, Finn brings out all his toys and schoolbooks to show off to her. Jo takes her sightseeing and buys her nice bottles of wine. Gifts and laughter and late nights that stretch into early mornings. Effie feels warm just thinking about it. 

But it's not a life. If she's not careful it'll become the closest thing she has to it - just a visitor to the real world of family and children and moving on. Effie doesn't want to spend the next thirty years doing the same thing she used to do for the Games - pretending, traveling, smiling for cameras and not thinking about the things she wants. The work is much better now, and less dangerous, but the motions remain the same. Effie is tired. 

There is a tailor who works out of a shop near to Peeta's bakery that Effie knows from the Games. He was born in District Two originally, then was brought to the Capitol to work as a stylist in the double-edged sword "do this, or else" way that such positions were offered to people, then turned Rebel when the Quell Arena blew and got himself arrested for treason. But he survived, against the worst odds (just like Effie had), and now he darns dresses and alters suits for the good people of Twelve. Down the way is Cressida's ex-husband (a whirlwind affair two years ago, which ended almost as quickly as it'd begun - although Effie is assured they parted on good terms), who works as an accountant now, and balances books for a lot of the would-be entrepreneurs trying to get their feet on the ground. Effie knows him well, also. 

Mayor Hudson lives on the same street, pointedly so, in a humble little house that looks more like an office than a dwelling - but the second floor is quite comfortable. They have lunch in her sunny little bedroom one afternoon, which is a very pleasant way to spend a meal, considering Mayor Hudson's charming conversation and wonderful habit of not asking Effie any personal questions. 

"Heard you were staying in the Victor's Village," is the closest she gets to mentioning it, although Effie is sure she has to be wondering. They've worked together (somewhat secretly, off the books) for almost three years now, but Effie has never come to Twelve in person. They've always met in train stations or government buildings in other Districts - and once, memorably, on a hovercraft they were sharing to the Capitol, which is now being called _Home Base._ (Again, Paylor's government outdoes itself with the terrible names.) 

"Yes, in a little house near Peeta Mellark," Effie agrees. Technically it's only Peeta's house, still. Whatever arrangement he and Katniss have, holding onto both houses when they by all rights should be sharing one, Effie has decided it's none of her business and she's not going to worry about it. 

"You should ask Abernathy to take you down to the lake while you're here, in that truck of his," Mayor Hudson says, sipping her tea. Her assumption, that she's in a position to ask Haymitch to do something for her (and perhaps also that Effie is here specifically to see him) is fair enough, but Effie still feels irritated by it. "It's lovely this time of year. There's a farmstead out there - nobody's met them yet, except for Abernathy. We're not sure where they came from - not people original to Twelve, that's for sure. But he's gotten to know them a little, he tells me they mean no harm." Mayor Hudson smirks. "And they're growing grapes, I hear."

Of course Haymitch had befriended the farmers most likely to supply him with wine, at some point, Effie thinks dryly. Perhaps that's an unkind thought; she still hasn't seen him, since their fight. "Is he truly the only person in town with a working car?"

"Old Triptee, the coot who lives out near the old Seam? He's got one that works. But he never drives it. Not sure he knows how, to be honest." Mayor Hudson shrugs. "Most of the settlers are self-sufficient. But the bakery gives them opportunity to interact with us, at least. I'd like them all to know that we're friendly."

"I'm sure they do," Effie murmurs, which Mayor Hudson seems to appreciate. She's so young - it still strikes Effie sometimes, when they see each other in person. Not even the youngest Mayor to have been elected, in this new era of Panem. Effie feels ancient just sitting next to her. 

There are just as many people in town that Effie knows than people she doesn't, she's a little startled to discover. The woman who runs the train station is a familiar face by now, as is her daughter, who lives in a house near the Hob. Greasy Sae's restaurant is now run by her granddaughter, who grins and teases Effie about her shoes and then gives her extra napkins with her food. The mechanic who fixes Haymitch's car was an engineer in Thirteen that Effie had been acquainted with, and Gale Hawthorne's mother now has a nice house in the center of town (supplemented by Gale's generous salary, Effie is sure). She's been seeing one of the old Peacekeepers who fought in the war - Moss something. Effie remembers being introduced once at a very awkward party in Two, in which Gale and Effie both pretended they didn't recognize each other. 

More familiar faces, too - people Effie's been introduced to at the bakery, or people she's been acquainted with through her work with Mayor Hudson, or just simply people that she's seen around before, back before she and Haymitch stopped talking, and Effie started avoiding Twelve like the plague. 

Could she have a life here? Yes. Of course she could, she's always known that. But the idea is a hot coal, scorching Effie every time she gets close to it. 

"Grape farmers," Peeta says thoughtfully, when Effie asks him about it at dinner that same night. It's just her and Peeta, late evening at the bakery, munching on peanut bread as she helps him clean up and close. Not much of a dinner, but neither of them have big appetites. "Yes, he's mentioned them before. He knew the father from Thirteen, I think."

"Covey?" Effie asks, desperately curious to know if these are the faceless people they'd been working with, for all those years. 

Peeta shakes his head. "I don't think they're around anymore. Or if they are, they're not calling themselves Covey."

Effie sighs, disappointed but not surprised. They'll probably never know for sure. 

"There's so many of them. Settlers. I still haven't met them all myself," Peeta continues. He pauses in his cleaning, leaning his weight against the counter. His prosthetic leg gives him trouble sometimes, Effie knows, and she watches with sympathy as he bends his knee back and forth, stretching out the tendon, his face strained with discomfort. "Haymitch helps Hudson with her little outreach plan. She pays him in petrol."

Effie feels a momentary flare of jealousy that she knows is very stupid, but it's acute nonetheless. Mayor Hudson is a beautiful young woman, and she's not married, either. "Must be a nice arrangement for them both," she says. 

"I guess." Peeta smiles at her. "You could go with him tomorrow. He's driving out somewhere - don't know where. But I can tell you're curious."

"That sounds like an absolutely terrible idea, to tell you the truth," Effie says, and Peeta laughs. "Is he. Is he alright? He was upset, when I left him the other night, and…"

"He's fine," Peeta says gently, but with a finality that tells Effie he's not going to tell her anything more. Effie smiles at him in reply, ruefully. "And what about you? Are you alright?"

It's the same question he asked the other night, when they were watching Haymitch and Katniss feeding the geese through the window. Effie shivers. "I'm - " she suddenly does not want to lie, with an intensity that startles her. "No. I don't think I'm alright."

Peeta frowns gently, and doesn't say anything. Effie blinks, staring at the row of pastries in the glass case, covered up for the night with soft, blue colored wax paper. 

"Well, neither are we," Peeta says after a moment, still frowning at her lopsidedly, the corners of his mouth twitching like he's about to turn into a smile, any moment now. "For obvious reasons."

Effie huffs out a sad laugh. 

"The point is to work on it though, right?" Peeta says, and sure enough, his frown has morphed into a smile. 

"Sure," Effie says, with another huff. Sounds sensible enough, she thinks. So it must be true. 

Effie wrote Haymitch several letters, over the months that they did not speak, and she doesn't really remember everything she'd said. She seems to recall that one of them was rather angry, and another contained some embarrassing tearstains, so she was less than enthused to hear that he'd kept them, to say the least. But the last one she wrote, she remembers. It went like this:

 _Haymitch:_ (no 'Dear' or 'my,' even a comma had felt far too forward - )

_I certainly understand your need for space, and I'm writing to tell you that I'm going to give it to you. You won't hear from me again! I promise! But there are some things that I'd like to say to you before we end our association completely, and since I'm fairly certain you're throwing these out as soon as they arrive in your poor, neglected letterbox, you'll understand why I feel the need to indulge myself. I'm unlikely to have the opportunity to do so again._

_Number one: Enclosed is the thirty-three dollars and forty-two cents that you have been insisting I owe you for approx. eight years, for the bottle of wine I accidentally drank on the train that one year that was yours. This money is in no way an admission of my culpability in that particular situation, but since you'll probably throw this out without opening it anyway, who cares. I know you're as relieved as I am that we will no longer be bickering about it._

_Number two: I know you probably already know this, but it was me who paid off the guards in Six that one time. You know what I'm talking about. I've been waiting to rub it in your face for years, but you absolutely refused to give me the opportunity, which was always very frustrating. Anyway, you're welcome._

_Number three: I truly and honestly never slept with Cinna. You asshole._

_And finally, an unfortunate number four: I think you made me a better person, in a number of very backwards ways, and I know you never wanted to know that but here I am telling you anyway. I know you wanted to think of yourself as a walking dead man, but you weren't and you know you weren't. You brought me to life every day I saw you. And well - that's very awkward for you probably, you can pretend I never wrote that if you like. I'm certainly going to try my best to forget now, since that's what you seem to want me to do. It's not what _I_ want, but as usual, my wants never really seem to be a priority for you. _

_I know you think I don't understand your life, or your pain, and that's fair. I did try to be there for you, but I know now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I was probably only insulting you, or making it worse. And I'm sorry for that, I'm sorry for anything that I might have ever said to you that was insensitive, or naive, or stupid. I hope you think enough of me to know that it was never intentional. I was Capitol-born, yes, but my parents had Rebel hearts, before there were even Rebels to pledge them to. I know you know _that._ But I'm a very good liar, unfortunately (this is something I have learned about myself, recently), and I'm starting to think that I might have fooled you a little too well, sometimes. _

_I chose to be an Escort to escape an arranged marriage, which is something I've never told you. (Maybe this is number five?) He was a friend of my grandmother's, and he was not a good person. This was after my father died, and I had very few options. My education was only half-finished, and there was no more money left from my father's estate to continue (and of course my grandparents refused to pay). I had wanted to be a reporter, actually, before I realized that reporters didn't really exist (at least the type of reporter I thought I wanted to be) but that's neither here nor there, and I'm sure I've told you that much, at least. Odds are still out on whether or not you remember._

_He was in his sixties when he proposed to me, and I was fifteen. He worked high up in the government. One night he took me to a party at his house, and some other people from the administration were there, and some very bad things happened that I've never really liked to talk about, and you probably wouldn't want to know about anyway. But suffice to say, when they offered me the spot in the Escort training, I took it. It was the only choice I had that would keep him away from me, and it did work. For better or worse._

_I'm not telling you this for pity, because I don't think I could bear it if you ever pitied me. I just want you to understand, I suppose. I've spent all these years trying to make you look at me, and see me for who I am, and I'm still not sure if you ever did. And that's my own fault, I guess. I didn't always make it easy. But what you said to me on the phone that night - that was wrong. It was wrong of you to say it, and it was wrong of you to think it. You often say things you don't mean when you drink, Haymitch, but I just had to tell you one time what a bastard you are for it, because I didn't deserve that, not at all._

_So there, I've stood up for myself. I feel better, I think. But I don't want you to beat yourself up about it, you understand. I just wanted to say it all, and now that I have, I think I can bear not talking to you anymore. I love you, Haymitch. You know that I love you, that I've loved you half my life, but I don't know that you ever believed it, believed in me. And that's alright, that's understandable. But if there's anything you remember, if you are reading this letter, remember that I love you, that I think you're a miserable bastard, that you're the most stubborn man who ever walked this Earth, and that I love you._

_Also, fuck you. But I love you. But really, go fuck yourself. Honestly. I suppose that's number six._

_Effie._

It's embarrassing, but not anymore embarrassing than some of the other things she's said to him, during tense moments in Thirteen during the war, or when they would stay up late after the Games were over and get drunk together, hidden away in her room like that would protect them from anything. Effie was never any good at keeping things from him. From other people - yes. But she loved him - loves him, still - and she's never been able to resist the instinct to be honest. 

Her father was the same way. In the year - less than a year - he'd managed to survive after her mother's death, he lost what little tact he'd had in the first place, and talked to Effie about all sorts of things he'd seen, and figured out, and knew. This was the knowledge that kept her alive for many years: which Gamemaker was sympathetic, and which Councilman was not. Which men to avoid, and which of the wives would look the other way. What it meant when a man said a certain thing to you, in a certain way. How to figure out if you could trust someone. Effie could've been a politician herself, probably, if she were a worse person. If she'd ever believed the propaganda she parroted on television.

(Does she count as a politician now? She certainly lies enough. She'll have to talk to Jo and Annie about that. Surely they'll have opinions.)

On the morning of Effie's fifth day in Twelve, she wakes up to the sound of Haymitch's truck, which has become a familiar enough sound in the early hours of dawn that she almost just goes right back to sleep, unthinkingly. But there's something off in the sound, something that sounds different, and by the time she makes her way out of the gigantic bed, she can hear him cursing. 

The truck is broken down, clearly. Effie peers out the window to see him glaring at it, some very suspicious smoke pouring out from beneath the hood. As she watches, he tries to lift it up and promptly burns his hand on the hot metal, cursing even louder. Effie snorts. 

A sign from fate, perhaps. Effie thinks about what he'd said to her the other night: _I read your letters. I kept them,_ and puts on a sweater, and goes outside. 

"Goddamn son of a filthy bitch whore - Effie," Haymitch says, breaking off mid-sentence, startled by the sound of her feet on the deck. He's wearing sunglasses, so Effie can't see his eyes, but his body language certainly looks startled enough. "Ah, hell. Mornin'."

"I hope you weren't referring to _my_ mother just then," Effie says. 

"Naw, your mother was a lady," Haymitch says, ruffling his hair with one hand sheepishly. "The truck's broke."

"I can see that," Effie says, amused. 

"Didn't mean to wake you. It's early still, I forgot you was in there."

His accent is always much thicker in the mornings, Effie had forgotten that. "I have coffee," she says enticingly, and his hand drops from his neck, falling against his side. "Inside. Would you like some? Before you tackle…" she waves her hand at the still-smoking truck. "That."

"Ain't much _I_ can do other than curse at it some more," Haymitch says, grimacing at the truck again. "Sure. If you're offerin'."

"I am," Effie says, and gestures at the door. She thinks she catches a smile drifting across his face as he climbs the stairs, but it could just be the sleep in her eyes still. Hard to tell. 

"The way Katniss and Peeta talk about you, I would've thought you could fix anything now," Effie says, shooing him down into one of the chairs at the small table. His hand is still smarting, she can tell by the way he's holding it, so she wets one of the dish towels in the bucket of water from the porch, cool from the outside air, and makes him wrap it around his palm before she even touches the coffee. "Hunting things, building things...you're an outdoorsman now, Haymitch."

"Hardly," Haymitch says, rolling his eyes. "You wanna know my secret with the deer?"

"Of course I do."

"Katniss keeps her salt in my shed out back," Haymitch says, and Effie laughs. "They know it's there. I usually just shoo the younger ones away but I couldn't resist, when I saw the buck."

"Smart little things," Effie comments, brewing his coffee strong, like she remembers him taking it in the Capitol. 

"All the animals out here are. All the crossbreedin'. Who the hell knows what they're mixed with, by now?" Haymitch picks the coffee up with his rag-wrapped hand, dripping water carelessly down his sleeve. Effie looks at the strong, corded tendon in his wrist, and swallows hard. "Thank you. This is good."

"It's easy to get, in Four," Effie says, a little nervously. She's made her own much weaker, and added some cane syrup, like Annie takes it. Effie doesn't normally drink it sweet, but for some reason, she'd had a craving. "They haven't made nearly as much progress as you, with exporting."

"The trains are less reliable out there, I hear."

"Yes." Effie wraps her palms around her mug, only lukewarm. She'd been too impatient to leave the kettle on the fire any longer. "They're still rebuilding the track system. It was the first thing they'd bombed, when Four revolted."

Haymitch sobers a little. "I remember."

They'd tried to starve them out. Effie thinks about sitting with Annie in Thirteen as they watched the coverage from the Capitol - propaganda, more like - and the lost look on her face at the aerial footage of Four's ruined, bombed out beaches. It had been practically apocalyptic. 

"You were going to visit some grape farmers today, I heard," Effie says, trying to be cheerful. Haymitch slants a look at her like he knows what she's doing. "How does that work, in this climate? Do they use greenhouses?"

"Yeah," Haymitch says shortly, a little impatient, still eyeing her. "They grow pumpkins and shit, too."

"Lovely. Peeta makes wonderful pies, I assume."

"Effie," Haymitch says, shaking his head. "Are you really gonna make me sit here and make small talk with you? A gunshot to the head would be kinder."

Effie narrows her eyes at him, over the rim of her coffee cup. "Are you really going to make jokes about gunshot wounds?"

"Alright," Haymitch says with a sigh, holding up his un-burned palm in apology. "Sorry. You know my sense of humor is always in bad taste."

Effie sighs. "I suppose I don't really know what else to say."

"Anything," Haymitch says, his voice painfully open. Effie looks over at him, startled, and his expression reminds her of Reaping Days. "Anything you want. Yell at me some more, if you want. I deserve it."

"You don't," Effie says weakly. 

"I know I hurt you."

"You did," Effie says, a weird mirror of her last sentence. "But if it's what you needed to do to get healthy, then maybe I'm okay with it."

Haymitch closes his eyes briefly, like he can't stand to look at her. His coffee cup is clutched in the hand wrapped in the rag, which has leaked water all over the table. 

"I can't," he begins haltingly, carefully, like each word is a struggle, "talk, like you can. You make it look easy. But I've never been able to do that. I can't even say things plainly, without makin' a fool of myself first. But you can make it sound beautiful."

Effie blinks at him, as shocked as she's ever been. She's not sure anyone's said anything nicer to her before in her life. 

"Even before the Games," he says, and then gulps down the last of his coffee like it's a shot of liquor, his eyes squinted. "Couldn't do it. Somethin' in my genes, maybe. My mama used to say I was a 'gentle giant.'" He snorts. "Gentle."

"You are," Effie says, her voice cracking. "I mean. You can be."

"I always tried to be gentle with you," he says. His face is still creased with pain, with things that Effie is remembering too - fights and tense silences, misunderstandings and that morning on that boat, all those years ago. Sunburned and sore and heartbroken, the both of them. "I wasn't always. And I'm sorry for that, Eff."

Effie doesn't speak; for all that she knows he was mostly right about her way with words, sometimes there are things that make her fail utterly. Moments where she can't say anything at all, because there are too many words to say, and none of them exactly right. 

"I used to think," Haymitch continues, hoarsely, "that one day you'd give up on me, and I hoped you would. I wanted to die, sweetheart, and I think you already knew that."

Effie covers her mouth with her hand, tears blurring her vision, and nods. 

"But there ain't no glory in dying. No honor," he says, "it's just dead. One minute you're there, and the next you're not. When I was...real low, my lowest, I thought that's what I deserved. To just...stop." He rubs his face, visibly frustrated. "I know you tried to love me the best you could, to help me. And you did. And I knew. I saw you, Effie, I always saw. I just didn't want you to know that I was lookin'."

Effie doesn't know what to do with her hands, or her face, or herself. She feels not quite present in her body, like she's suddenly just a copy of a person. Not completely there, knocked out of sync with the rest of the universe. 

Haymitch takes a great breath, like he's steeling himself to be hit. "And if you don't - or, what I mean to say is, if you _still_ love me - "

"Oh fuck you," Effie blurts, and Haymitch lets his fist fall to the table with a loud thud. "Idiot. Are you serious? You idiot." She can barely get the words out, around the crying. 

"Well don't hold back or nothin', Christ," Haymitch says, but his mouth is twitching, his eyes warm in their regard. 

"I am actually going to kill you one day," Effie swears, resting her face in her hands as she tries to get herself back under control. Her lungs burn a little, her throat aches with the force of the emotion that's welling up, spilling over from her insides, as messy as her love for him has always been. " _One_ year of the silent treatment and you think I've thrown you over for greener pastures. You idiot. I can't even _stand_ you sometimes. No, don't touch me - "

"Don't make it sound improper, for fuck's sake, c'mere," Haymitch says, laughing weakly at her as he pulls her hands away from her face, using one foot to drag her chair closer. "Gimme a fucking hug. Jesus Christ."

Effie submits with no small amount of resentment, shoving her face into his neck almost violently, her shoulders shaking. To be held, after so long, feels almost painful: his big hands on her neck make her feel small, and restless, and a little embarrassed, like he can somehow feel the desperation in her bones through the contact between their skin. But he holds her just as tightly, tighter than he's ever dared to touch her before. His breath, ruffling her hair, is heavy and labored. 

When she was younger, Effie used to daydream about him saying such things, the things that he's said to her over the past few days: _I'm sorry. I miss you._ But in this moment, with his chest trembling a little beneath her cheek, Effie thinks that the deck alone is maybe better than all those words he just said, combined. The little guesthouse he built for her, because he wanted to give her a small space where she'd feel safe, because he wanted her close. The food, the fire. The tea in his fridge. Haymitch isn't very good with words, no, but he's good with other things, maybe. Effie knows him well too, and maybe she didn't want to look too closely either. Maybe she told herself some things because she was afraid of seeing it, and then losing it. 

"I'm still not going to have sex with you," Effie says after a minute, muffled into his shoulder.

Haymitch's laugh sounds like a bark. "Okay. I mean - we'll work up to it. S'fine."

"I might not _ever_ have sex with you," Effie says tearfully, indignant and huffy, knowing she sounds ridiculous and not particularly caring. "I might just string you along for twelve years and see how _you_ like it - huh? Does that sound fun? You can stop laughing now, because I'm very serious."

"I deserve that," Haymitch mutters, still huffing and puffing with laughter. His hand is careful, gentle, against the back of her head. 

"You do. You _really_ do."

"Sweetheart," Haymitch says, rubbing his cheek against her forehead as he nudges his face down next to hers, the scruff of his beard scraping roughly against her skin, "I deserve everything you wanna give me. And I'll take it, you hear? I'm ready now, and I want it."

Effie closes her eyes, tearing up again. 

"You should also know that I'm not ever going to go to fucking therapy," he continues, after a long beat. Effie snorts loudly into his neck, jittering with laughter. "That's a dealbreaker for me. Not kidding. I'll talk to the guy on the phone but you're not ever gonna get me in that motherfucking office."

"Me too," she says hoarsely. "I mean - me neither. I hate sitting there, talking while he watches me, it's - " she shudders. "Dealbreaker. Yes."

"So we're in agreement on that, that's good."

"Yes," she says, clutching his collar, feeling warm all over. Feeling alive again. Isn't it funny, Effie thinks, how one can go so long not feeling like that, and not even knowing. Until you step off a train, walk into a house, and find your life there waiting for you. Where it had been all along. "I think we're in agreement."

"Good," Haymitch says. The sun is shining on them both, lighting up the whole room. Effie closes her eyes again, and takes a minute.

**Author's Note:**

> Be like the fox  
> who makes more tracks than necessary,  
> some in the wrong direction.  
> Practice resurrection.  
>   
> [Wendell Berry](https://cals.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html)


End file.
